The Saga of Mike Force Morrow Team 3 and the Origin of Maxwell's Militia (by Michael A. Cessna, clinkerbuilt@hotmail.com) Allen Maxwell was one of those rare combinations: highly intelligent, well educated, charismatic, driven, and utterly fearless. As a USArmy Special Forces Captian, Maxwell had become a near-legend among the Montanyard hillmen of the South Vietnamese Highlands. He was one of a very few American officers who helped quell the 'Montanyard Uprising' of 1969. Shortly after this, he was wounded seriuosly enough to be sent back to the US. Discouraged by what he saw as intrinsic failings in US policy, Maxwell resigned his commission. After his release from the hospital, in 1971, Maxwell drifted from job to job for a few years, until he met an old friend from the Special Forces, who had a job offer for him. Allen Maxwell saw the Project as something he could believe in. After his MP training, Maxwell was assigned to the MFM project, and frozen. Awakened in 1981, Maxwell was assigned to the then-forming MFM3. After the Team had completed its unit training, Maxwell was unanimous choice to be its Commander. Mike Force Morrow Team 3 was awakened fifteen years after Prime Base's Final Program began running (see PF008 for details). Only one member of their local cadre was still alive. His detailed report painted a picture of total, and worsening, chaos. Bandit gang's ruled the land. "Government control" was isolated to a few, scattered farming villages. The Teams' contact had managed to organize a small militia for the defense of the four villages closest to the Team's base. The night the Team came out of their hole, they were unable to raise Prime Base. Setting out make contact with their local 'fifth column', the Team arrived at the cadre-mans' ranch house. By chance, this man had gathered the leaders of his militia there. When he saw the Team, he wept for joy. his militia had become a thorn in the side of several bandit groups, who were now massing to overrun the villages, as an 'example'. Against a thousand marauders, the villagers had no chance. At this point, a facet of Maxwell's personality, dismissed by the Project shrinks as a function of his military career, came to the fore. Allen Maxwell was a latent 'control freak'. While he had never stated it (even to himself), Maxwell's 'core philosophy' could be summed up as: "Peace is preferable to Chaos. Since Order is the opposite of Chaos, True Peace can come through True Order". Faced with what he saw as absolute chaos, Maxwell decided that he had the perfect weapon to bring about True Peace. Giving the most dynamic speech of his life, Maxwell whipped the Team and the locals into a fighting frenzy. In a two-day fight, the combination of the Teams' superior training and firepower, matched to the local's sheer desperation, completely destroyed the bandit 'army' in its camps. What finally 'unhinged' Maxwell, though, was what they found in the camps--some of the bandits had turned cannibal. This was bad enough, but the rest of the bandits had not seen this as any sort of problem, and had done nothing to stop their 'brethren'. Maxwell made a series of speeches to the surronding communities, that made people look at him as almost a demi-god. The towns elected him 'Supreme Leader', and, with his Morrow-supplied 'Militia', set about establishing 'Peaceful Control' over as wide an are as he could (one of his most far-flung outposts was the town of LaCrosse, Wisconsin--"Cross" of PF003 'Lucifer'). Maxwell's empire came to an end ten years later, when he was shot dead by a sniper, during a border inspection tour. Maxwell had never married, and left no heirs. His subordinates tried to hold things together, for a time, but eventually fell to fighting among themselves. Then, the edifice Maxwell had worked so hard to create, came to an end. Michael A. Cessna