To most couples, the culmination of their romantic tale might have been taken to new elation by the birth of a new child, which was not the case with the Walker family. Jack Walker was a hard man and part of a legacy of Picon soldiers, dedicated to his job and while he wouldn’t admit it, he probably loved the fleet more than his wife. On the other hand Mary Walker was from Caprica and she saw the fleet as a way to get an education, see the colonies and experience things she may never see in civilian life. When Mary became pregnant, it created a slight strain on what was a perfect marriage as far as military couplings went.
The birth of Julie was a complicated situation for both parents, Jack refused to take any posting on the ground and was under no circumstances going to transfer and jeopardize his fast track to success which left Mary with all of the responsibilities and obligations. After giving Birth, Mary was issued an honorable discharge upon request and decided to raise her child on Caprica which she considered home even if she had no family. Mary had never fully gotten over the ‘loss’ of her husband who was now estranged from her and had never felt any real love towards her daughter, suffering from post-partum depression.
At the tender age of two, Julie was deprived of her mother, Mary having committed suicide by shooting herself in the head to escape the endless repertoire that was her life. Julie still had a father though, but he didn’t want a child to raise, what was he going to do with a kid. Instead, the responsibility was shuffled on to his mother, a war widow from the first Cylon War.
Julie’s childhood aside from the loss of her mother was uneventful, her grandmother did the best she could raising her but Julie often acted out in temper tantrums both at home and in school, the young girl often becoming angry at the slightest provocation, sometimes without any at all. It was an uphill struggle for her all the way, she longed for her parents and wanted nothing more than to be with her father, a man she had met only a handful of times.
As she got older, into her late teenage years she had begun to smarten up after a few run ins with the law on Picon, although nothing serious, a night in a jail cell for public drunkenness does have a way of opening someone’s eyes. The one thing she wanted was the approval of her father, the only person she felt close to and to do that, she knew she needed to follow in his footsteps.
Everything she did since leaving High School was to follow the path of her father, even going as far as to do exactly as he did and major in history for four years in preparation of OCS, her own love of astronomy taking a backseat to her father’s interests. She was desperate for his love and when she showed her interest in the fleet, he began to speak with her a little more, even if it was nothing more than short correspondences. After receiving her bachelors, she went to OCS with high hopes of making a name for herself in the fleet, something that would get more of her father’s attention.
The reality of it all though, was that she had passed OCS but it was nowhere near the top of her class even if it was still a completion. She was heartbroken, she had focused so much and worked so hard, she hadn’t had fun, she had avoided partying and everything else to study as hard as she could. With a new resolve she was accepted into flight school and it was here that she knew she would prove herself, still following in the career path of her father.
Flight school was a different story from OCS, she was relentless in her pursuit of being the best trainee there was, she wanted to be number one and she wanted it badly. Put into the Raptor pipeline, she trained hard and pushed herself beyond her own limits, with only one notable complaint against her in her entire time in flight school; she pushed herself too hard and as a result tended to expect things from her bird that she couldn’t expect to do. Nonetheless, she succeeded this time around and graduated at the very top of her pipeline.
After Flight School she was stationed onboard the Battlestar Chimaera for the next four years, her relationship with her father improving as she could not relate to him far more. What had begun as following in the footsteps of another had become a passion for Julie, it had become something she loved and that something to her was flying. She loved fleet life to, where her family had been small growing up, she felt as if she had family all around her now. Growing from a nugget into an experienced pilot, she earned her callsign ‘Easy’ for being a cheap drunk and waking up one too many times trying to remember what or who she possibly did the night before.
After her promotion to full Lieutenant, she was transfer to the Battlestar Solaria where she would fill a more senior posting in the flight wing then she had on her prior ship. Her father, Admiral Jack Walker showed her genuine affection, at least by his standards which was meeting her once a year for a drink on Picon to catch up.
Her time on the Solaria was eventful for her and she never felt welcome, she had begun to feel the pressure of having a family member who was known to be a ranked member of the military. People assumed she had been given special treatment and shown favoritism when she had worked for everything herself, having had enough of the ship after trying for years to keep the posting, she put in for a transfer.
It was just her luck maybe, that she was transferred over to the Battlestar Cereberus, it was a new posting and a chance for her to start over, hopefully with a crew that didn’t judge her based on a man who had never been there for her once in her life.
