With a tank of Lima Victor prepped and ready for dispersal, I turned my attention to the future. And that future would of course be crafted in the tomb of my past.

All dramatics aside, there's one aspect of nation building that lacks any form of excitement, but cannot be ignored.

Paperwork.

This is where being a lawyer comes in handy when you're a covert operative. Paperwork creates legitimacy, legitimacy creates authority. The coalition of settlements that Mikhail and Preston were building needed to be bound by more than just a handshake and a sense of honor. We needed a commitment, an ironclad doctrine outlining exactly what we owed and what was owed to us. It needed to be part contract, part charter, and part declaration.

Naturally I couldn't rely on American law, or any of the other old world laws, but the basic theories still applied. As did the theories of political philosophy, that's the great thing about the greatest philosophers, their work is timeless and can be applied anywhere. Of course, one needed to be able to apply them to the current circumstances, that required knowledge of the situation. Not only the Commonwealth, but the new world as a whole."

So I gathered the two best people I could think of for that. Goris was extremely well travelled, he'd mentioned civilization out west, but he was new to the Commonwealth, Sturges was the best that I could do on that. He wasn't as well travelled as Preston or Asher, but I was quickly learning he was the most reasonable of the rabble we'd dragged in, and he had a surprisingly keen mind.

Goris was good enough to have a book on the New California Republic law, the major power that had risen on the west coast. It wasn't hard to tell that most of it was a cut and paste version of American law. From Goris's description, they were making a lot of the same mistakes that we did. Too much bureaucracy, too many special interests, too much nationalist expansionism. Still, they had maintained a solid footing for over a century and were the primary power in all of California. But they were bloated and slow now, they had the luxury of it, we didn't.

We needed to be quick and decisive, I already knew that. And by the time we'd finished discussing the NCR, Goris and Sturges agreed with me. Though Goris remained cautious of putting too much power in the hands of one individual. Apparently there had been something similar in Arizona, creating an organization based loosely on the Roman Empire, called Caesar's Legion. I had to give the man behind it, this Caesar, credit. He'd apparently managed to expand his zone of control over Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado.

Still, Mikhail had been in this sort of position before, I knew he could be trusted with the complete authority I intended to give him. The most important part would be creating a strong chain of command and forging a civilian government once the situation was stable enough to allow it.

Yes, yes, the refrain of conquerors. Freedom after security, I'm aware of just how many atrocities were carried out using that justification. Here's the thing, democracy is probably the worst starter government ever devised. A thorough look through history will reveal that every successful democracy in history has arisen from a more longstanding and authoritative government. Even the first western democracy, Athens, was midwifed into greatness by the greatest tyrant in human history.

In any case, we were in agreement that for the moment, a military chain of command would do. Goris was aware of yet another group that had adopted this method. The Brotherhood of Steel claimed to be descended from fragments of the American Military. Whether or not this was true didn't matter much, but they did have a distinctly militaristic hierarchy, though they sounded like they'd taken a lot of their inspiration from fantasy novels, at least in terms of titles. They were of the opinion that they were the only ones responsible enough to possess pre-war technology. This apparently had the side effects of making them incredibly well equipped with power armor and energy weapons, and making them incredibly isolationist therefore keeping their numbers low.

The exceptions to this were chapters in the Midwest, where they were apparently building their own little empire, and chapters in DC where they had set up in the pentagon and rendering aid to the surrounding areas, or at least they used to, apparently they'd gone the route of empire as well. Certainly a possible threat to be considered, but much like the NCR, that's a problem to be considered at a later date.

In any case, we should be fine, so long as we avoided the dogma and ideology that gave them their sense of obsessive superiority. I've never cared for cults, especially ones dedicated to mutual masturbation.

Once we hammered out the system of command, we were able to move on to the specifics of the deal we were offering to the settlements. They wouldn't like the taxation system, but if the reformed Minutemen were going to function, they would need resources. And if I'm being honest, I'd need resources for my hunt for Shaun.

Sturges was the one who offered up the idea of a famine safety net. Apparently, the vast majority of the settlements that we would be recruiting would be farming settlements, the idea that a bad season wouldn't guarantee starvation would be very appealing, and it would make the taxation system easier to stomach. It would also help keep the Minutemen relevant, people might forget external threats if they were kept at bay for long enough, but every farmer I've ever met lives in constant fear of a bad harvest.

Of course, we'd have to leave an out clause, just in case we didn't have the resources. That would be a big issue in the old days, but thankfully, I was fairly sure that I was the only lawyer left in the area. Legalese is a very useful language to speak when you want to make sure no one knows what you're saying.

This was of course all just a framework, we'd have to adjust it once we got hard numbers on each settlements contribution capability and there would likely have to be even more changes once we ran it by the settlement leaders themselves.

Does all of this sound boring? Good, it should, if this sort of thing is exciting, it means that things are going horribly wrong.

It took us about three hours to get to the point we were at, and we still weren't even halfway done. We still needed to discuss local laws versus overall laws, and enforcement was going to be a mess to untangle. And that's not even getting into the necessary delay until we had the resources to actually follow through on all of these promises.

The only reason we stopped when we did was because of the Knock.

I'd been expecting it, but I wasn't looking forward to it. Still, it had to be done.

"Come in."

The door to the overseer's escape tunnel, now the main entrance to my office, slid open to reveal Preston Garvey, anger and disgust barely contained behind a mask of stoicism. His demeanor immediately putting a damper on the enjoyable atmosphere of intellectual debate that had taken over the room.

"Thank you," I looked to Sturges and Goris, "We'll meet again soon."

Seeming to sense the newfound hostility in the room, neither of them said anything, just nodded and gathered their notes. Sturges took Goris's things for him, so as not to make him reveal his claws. He'd taken the revelation of the deathclaw's true nature remarkably well, 'well, so long as you don't gut me, we'll get along just fine.'

I'd also learned another one of Goris's little idiosyncrasies. Instead of even attempting to hold a pencil or pen, he just dipped one of his claws in an inkwell and used it like a quill. It was fascinating to me how he'd managed to adapt to the necessities of human society.

Preston stood aside as the two exited, Sturges paused and shared a few words with him that I couldn't hear, but based on Preston's look of betrayal, I had to assume they were something positive about me.

The door slid closed with a slight whoosh, and for a solid minute, there was only the sound of our breathing and the scribbling of my pen. Preston took two steps towards my desk, putting him in the center of the room, but made no move to sit down. Instead he settled into a kind of parade rest and stared down his nose at me with the kind of professional irritation that only soldiers are capable of. "Mikhail said you wanted to speak."

I had to give it to him, for a moment, I could almost believe I was in a forward operating base again, being addressed by an irate Ranger captain, whose mission had been scrubbed due one of my operations. And he would have been a Ranger, I was sure of it, too good of a soldier for regular infantry, too straightforward for special forces, too proud for the Deltas, and way too idealistic for covert ops.

I didn't look up from my notes, just continued working. "How'd clearing the cabin go?"

The question seemed to knock him off balance, he'd been expecting something else. He hid it well though. "Fine, ferals are easy to take out if you know how to deal with them."

That actually piqued my curiosity, "And how is that?"

"They aren't really all that smart, all you need is a grenade or a mine and one of those old monkey noisemakers." That was actually kind of ingenious.

I shook my head though, "The ones with the cymbals, god I hate those things. They're creepy, whoever thought that was a good toy clearly had issues." I chuckled at a dark thought in my head. "He probably did a stint with Vault-tec."

Preston almost laughed too, almost, but he caught himself. "So is this why you wanted to talk, we're supposed to be all buddy-buddy now?" The venom in his voice mounted as he spoke. "You think I'll forget about this morning that easily, without even an apology? Do you honestly think I'm that stupid?"

Straight to the point then. I set down my pen, "Preston, I'm not going to apologize to you. But no I don't think you're stupid, believe it or not, I actually like you."

Preston opened his mouth, then my last words registered, throwing him off. I pressed my attack. "I admire you Preston, you have something that I've never had. You actually believe in your cause."

I stood up, drawing myself to my full height. This wasn't an intimidation tactic, even standing, Garvey had a solid seven inches on me. "I think that's why I've never gotten along all that well with regular military soldiers. My father always said that you join the military for a million reasons, but you stay because you believe in it."

Garvey wasn't saying anything, apparently content to let me give my little speech before he dismissed it. "I've never really believed in America, I've done horrible things in her name, but not because of any sense of patriotism. They pulled me out of college, I agreed to do it mainly because I was bored. I kept doing it mainly because I was good at it, and because of that, I enjoyed it."

I turned away from him to stare at a painting I'd hung on the wall, Van Gogh's Starry Night, one of my favorites. "Ming was like me, we both came from the top of our societies, and because of that, we had an intimate understanding of just how rigged the systems were in our favor. That bred an inherent cynicism. We fought for our countries because that was what let us do what we were born for."

I looked back to Preston, gauging his reaction, confused. Good, I could work with anything other than outright hostility. "Really most of my friends weren't patriots. Emma enjoyed the excitement of it all, Liam saw it as a way to get a step up in life. Mikhail actually cared about Russia, probably still does. But we all let the business itself become our passion, all except Nate."

Preston finally interrupted, "Why are you telling me all of this?"

I shrugged, and headed for the door that led towards the reactor room. "Let's take a walk."

The door whooshed open, and I kept walking, hoping he would follow me. Thank god for noisy metal floors, I could hear his footsteps behind me without having to look back. "Nate wasn't made for covert ops work, he had the intellect, he had the skill, and he had the resolve, but he didn't have heart. He was an inherently good person, something that you couldn't be if you worked for the Activity. He had a strict moral code that he lived by, don't know how he turned out that way, his childhood was hell."

We stepped into the reactor room, a replacement surge capacitor meant that there were no bolts of lightning to dodge anymore, and the skeletons and roaches had been cleared away. "Whoever recruited him made a big mistake, thinking that he could be convinced to adjust his worldview. Nothing could corrupt him, not money, not propaganda, not women. He had his code, and he stuck to it."

"Sounds like he would make a good Minuteman."

I snorted, "Yeah, he probably would. There was only one thing that swayed him, that convinced him to ignore that code, and conduct the dirty business of being a covert operative."

It was bait and he took it easily. "And what was that?"

I threw him a sidelong glance, "Me." There was a level of theatrics to all this, but I was being sincere. "He always told me that he fell in love with me the moment he laid eyes on me. I have no idea what he saw, I'm kind of a cunt in case you haven't noticed."

That actually earned me a laugh. "Yeah, I fuckin' noticed alright."

Good, Preston needed something from me, he had a pride to him that needed to be assuaged if he was going to work with me. "In any case, he loved me deeply. And it was that love that let him do what needed to be done in order to accomplish our assignments. The only problem was, I didn't feel the same way, at all."

I could almost feel the strange look Preston was giving me as we stepped out into the main corridor. "I thought he was your husband."

I nodded, "He was, after I lost Ming, I was depressed and drunk one night and went to his door. He took me into his bed and pretended it was more than it was. Then I got pregnant, so we got married, and for two years, we pretended we could make it work, I pretended I could love him."

The door at the end of the hall opened, and I led him into that room. It was the first time in the room since Nate was killed. I was expecting an emotional gut punch that didn't come. "We were both utterly miserable."

I crossed the threshold, "I suppose I was better off in a way. I had the hope that Ming might someday wake up, he knew I would never love him."

We passed by the cryopods turned coffins, out of the corner of my eye, I could see Preston's head swiveling from side to side, his eyes wide at the frigid corpses. Clearly he hadn't been in this room before, had probably avoided it on purpose. Finally we reached the pod I was looking for.

I looked up at Nate's dead and frozen face. Preston did too, realization dawning on him. "Is this…? Oh I'm really sorry."

I shook my head, he was a good man, even he couldn't be angry at a widow in front of the corpse of her dead husband. "You remind me a lot of him. I did him a disservice by pretending to be something I wasn't. I won't do the same to you. I won't apologize for what I said this morning. I won't change my tactics to suit your tastes. If you want to play at being a hero, then you should leave, and try your luck on your own."

Preston looked from Nate to me, and back again, unsure of how to respond. Yes I was using my husband's corpse as a prop, but it was for a good cause and he'd understand. "But if you want to rebuild your organization, if you want to make it better than ever before, if you want to actually help the people of the Commonwealth, then stay. You may not like my tactics, you probably won't like me any better than you do now, but work with me, and we'll make the Minutemen into the organization you always wanted it to be."

I wasn't sure if this was true, but it sounded good, and it was what he needed to hear. I extended my hand, "Do we have a deal?"

Preston looked pensive, but after a moment, he took my hand and shook it.

"Deal."

And here's the second this week. I have mixed feelings about this, I'm worried that I'm making Preston seem too forgiving or making Madison difficult for you guys to enjoy as a protagonist. I'm trying to avoid playing her as a mary sue, is anyone getting that impression?

We've been out of the action for a while, don't worry, we launch the reformed minutemen's first combined operation next week. I'm trying to really show how an organization like the minutemen would be formed and turned into a professional fighting force, based mostly on real life examples of US special forces training up foreign soldiers in south America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Either way, R&R people.

Next week: Operation Bloody Mary