Take my love, take my land,

Take me where I cannot stand.

I don't care, I'm still free,

You can't take the sky from me.

Mack. Yes, he is the tough, rough around the edges, even brash biker who bashes the enemy heads with a shovel. But that is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of him. For me it's the fact that he is a free man. Free in a way that only a terran outlaw can be.

I will leave the discussion about what "law" means in the Starshatter universe for another character but Mack is a man with strong sense of morality. Such a man does not need laws. Does not need to be guided. He sets his own path. The reason he doesn't need laws is that he doesn't see the point. He himself knows well what is just and what isn't. The Crow is an individual whose morals happen to coincide with the laws of the Terran Minarchy. You can be sure that Mack would be the first to go against someone breaking fundamental laws or hurting innocents. You can take everything else away from him but you cannot take his freedom. He will not allow it. A man with his bike and ship, his brothers and sisters, and a charted course. He doesn't need anything else. His purpose is freedom.

There are other reasons why the biker has chosen this life. Knowledge proving to be a key factor. Mack knows what a corrupt law enforcement is. You can understand his contempt for Boris at first. The biker cannot let himself to trust Boris as a lawman, he trusts him only as a terran because he cannot forget what once was and what could one day be, so he remains vigilant. Because there should always be a fail-safe, a guarantee that freedom will be preserved and the ones that can have the best perspective are the ones outside the law, looking in.

Mack...is broken as well. Like many of the crew. His family was taken away from him and he was left alone. Unlike Alric and Awesome he neither seeks help, nor embraces it. He accepts it. He might be broken but he continues to move forward because the pain and loss are part of him, they are one of the reasons he is who he is. But in the process he has lost his way, I think. He was no longer free because he was focused on revenge. But against who? The people that pulled the trigger and killed everyone he cared about? Or the people who gave the order? Or maybe it's anyone he can get his hands on, there will always be someone else. He had chained himself. A man trying to fight against the entire unjust Universe. It took Anit'za and the crew to remind him to focus on the right thing, on the small victories that truly matter. That saving even one life, teaching one person to value and fight for their freedom is a path worth walking. It is telling that he is slowly warming up to the crew. They might never be his family but they will always be his comrades and sometimes...sometimes I think that is enough. To have someone who shares a common goal, a common ideal. A reminder that you are not alone, that even if you were to fall there would be others to continue where you left off, a reminder that you are free.

The Crew of Starshatter: Mack ("An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law and not necessarily against i...