[color=f7941d][u][b]Colonel Denver Abernathy - Fort Golf - Mid-Morning, October 17th [/b][/u][/color]

Denver rubbed his eyes and sat up from his desk and stretched. It had already been a long day. At this point in his life they all were. Rising an hour before dawn Denver worked through the day, retiring only an hour or so before midnight. If he was lucky he got about two hours of time in his garden before he was called in for meetings, judiciary work and intelligence coordination.The garden nourished him mentally as he found the meditative work grounding and humbling. Warm soil in his hands returned him to his roots as the son of a dirt farmer. The life of the majority of people back in California. It was a brief and treasured respite from his burden of command. 

As military governor Denver was expected to not only maintain NCR domination of the region but to oversee all legal proceedings occurring under the Articles of Incorporation. Murders, abductions, robberies and other grand criminal behavior was judged and enforced under his authority. After drafting the AoI he had created an organization of frontier marshals to exert NCR law at a local level without the need for interference by the 3rd Infantry. The bureau of marshals was slow to act at best and corrupt and ineffective at worst. More often than not to achieve the results he desired and maintain cooperative relationships with the towns under the AoI he had to deploy his own rangers to find and bring the perpetrators to justice. Enforcement of NCR law under Colonel Abernathy was short, harsh and too often lethal. Lack of resources and suitable detention facilities required his rangers to enact a brutal form of frontier justice. Summary executions, usually in the form of a hanging, were common punishments for criminal violators in the Mojave. 

Denver had received another missing persons report from Mayor Meyers of Primm and a plea for intervention. For weeks he had lacked the personnel required as all available rangers were involved in the hunt for the Brotherhood provisioners. Now with the two young members captured and secured in the basement of his headquarters, Denver had a ranger to spare. He had informed Ranger Richard Holmes that he was to accompany SSG Keyes’ squad from Delta Company on their way back to the Mojave checkpoint. Richard would help ensure the safe delivery of the male Brotherhood provisioner to the NCRCF and then continue with Keyes’ squad south until Primm. There Richard would branch off and pursue leads on finding the cause of the disappearances in Primm.   

Richard and Denver had known each other for decades and the old ranger was the only peer of his that Denver considered his friend. They had met as rangers before Denver assumed his officership and after the departure of NCR forces from the region Richard and a small platoon of rangers remained behind to assist Denver in his command as governor. They had proved invaluable and over the years Denver had become fiercely loyal to them and them to him. He trusted Richard would complete his mission as directed and return before the month was out. 

The old ranger was spending his morning trying to convince their Brotherhood prisoner to accept food or drink. The young man had been stubborn in his refusal of any refreshment but after two days of captivity severe dehydration was apparent. Neither Richard nor Denver wanted the young man to die. As a corpse he was useless and any chance of negotiation with the Brotherhood of Steel would be critically damaged. Denver hadn’t gotten much information out of their female prisoner but it was enough to help clarify the strength of the Mojave chapter. They had used plain clothed provisioning agents to secure groceries through barter, never resorting to open banditry or raids. It told him that they weren’t desperate for supplies but also that their population remained low enough to be unable to recuperate any losses that may be incurred by such aggressive actions. That they had remained undetected for so long yet still able to raise up young men and women like his prisoners informed Denver that they held a secure location large enough to allow for training facilities. It would have to be located among the mountains, canyons and hills of the central Mojave. Probably between Helios One and Black Mountain but to try and find the entrance would be nearly impossible. Sandstorms, radiation, narrow gulches, deathclaws and now the growing Green prevented any concentrated investigation of the area. This rendered the chapter untouchable and any chance at eliminating them nonexistent.

Denver was divided, his gut told him that the NCR’s occupation of the Mojave would only be secure once the Brotherhood in the region were eliminated as they had been back West. However, all evidence pointed to an unassailable enemy that could hold out indefinitely. Any action against them would at best waste resources and at worst waste the lives of his soldiers. 

He rubbed his face and looked out the window of his office at the grounds of Fort Golf. SSG Keyes’ squad would be arriving this afternoon and Denver still had to set up a debriefing for them. He had received radio confirmation last night of the Ambassador’s arrival to the Strip Embassy but a detailed report was needed to ascertain more information about who exactly ambassador Watts was. Denver had heard little about the man’s political past aside from being a vocal proponent of the Van-Graff family corporation. Watts had appeared suddenly on the political stage during the famine and worked to justify the growing corporatization of the republic. It sickened Denver to see his country slowly become the personal property of the Van-Graffs. They were little more than common gangsters, their wealth and influence only serving to allow them to operate more discreetly and thus more sinisterly in Denver’s eyes. He couldn’t express it but within him grew a vague nausea of dread that the greatest threat to the NCR lay not hidden in a bunker in the mountains of the Mojave. Rather it lay to the West, in the presidential office of Shady Sands.