[i]Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.[/i]

Some folks would call Maxwell stuck in the past, and maybe they were right. The clock on his wall was old fashioned and so were the books spread haphazardly about his room. Of course, books as a whole were old fashioned. Most people did their reading on their PADD or their computers. They said it was faster. Maxwell sometimes wished the universe went a lot slower.

He sat half-naked on his bed and stared at his desk. There was a picture frame atop it, and the people inside were himself, his wife, and his daughter from five years ago, just before Latisha caught that supervirus that'd spread around town. It still felt like a bad dream sometimes: one day his wife had danced with him to their favorite song, and the next she was in the hospital. She'd died the day after that. And yet there'd been no time to grieve: he had to drive his daughter to her exam the same day, or else she could've failed that test. It wasn't much longer after that when Sunny went missing, just a few months before she was supposed to graduate high school. The world wasn't in the habit of letting wounds heal.

Maxwell's eyes drifted to the right, toward the gun sitting on the desk beside the picture. Sometimes he wanted to do that one thing he knew was a coward's way out. He just wanted to see them again.

"Just wait, baby girl," he mumbled, patting the picture frame. "You and Momma just wait a little longer. I'll make things right."

Maxwell pushed himself up and got dressed for a jog around the ship.

[hr]

Silver finished his twenty minute jog at the door to the FRAME bay. It looked like one of the more professional members of the team, Sabrina, was already down there working on her FRAME. The old cop nodded approvingly. He also approved of the music coming from her radio: it was better than the crap some of the kids on the ship listened to, that was for sure.

Maxwell made his way to his own FRAME and gave the old Dreq a good look-see. He clicked his tongue as he looked it over. He'd had to put himself in harm's way to redirect fire from that Oliver kid, and his FRAME suffered for it. There were gaps in the reactive armor, and the weapons certainly could be in better shape. Maybe it was worth considering getting one of those FRAMEs the XCD offered...

As he cleaned his FRAME Maxwell couldn't stop thinking about how close the Panthers were to being on XCD soil. The XCD, the most neutral of the nations and certainly not one caught up in any wars, was hiring mercenaries to work with its Armored Reconnaissance Regiment? Maxwell would've understood if a corporation was hiring them, but the XCD military? What did they need mercenaries for?

The work started to get a little taxing, so Maxwell took a quick break and had a mouthful of water. He stepped on over by the other pilot, Sabrina, to see how her repairs were going... and she was actually making good progress. She knew more about FRAME repair than he did, that was for sure.

"What do you make of this situation?" he asked, taking another gulp from his water bottle before continuing. "Besides 'profitable.'"