Chapter 1: Setting the Stage

Michael left his family’s dojo sore, proud, and a little peeved. He’d just had his ass kicked six ways from Sunday by a slip of a girl-woman. Had it been Cathleen, the process and outcome would have been entirely expected. But no, it was his newest wife, fourteen-year-old Patricia, who had cleaned his clock. Clearly, she had been carefully coached on his habits and weaknesses by her sister-wife, Cathleen, but that took nothing at all away from her achievement.

They weren’t really Michael’s wives, they were his teammates, co-sponsors, and lovers. From the Confederacy’s view, they simply had a shared household, the Confederacy having eliminated marriage upon pickup. Michael and the sister-wives saw it differently. The six partner sponsors considered themselves married.

Now a hybrid team working in a partnership between the US government and the Confederacy, they were both deputy US marshals and members of the Confederacy’s Office of Targeted Extraction. The Sa’arm had landed, and their team’s mission was to assist and ‘collect’ trapped individuals as assigned.

This unique relationship placed an unusual pressure on the team’s AI, named Dora by Michael. She had split off a bud so that she could provide advice and assistance, with much like an attorney-client privileged relationship. Her old ‘self’ continued to provide the normal services to the family, but the real Dora, as she came to consider herself, became a member of the family in a very short time. In some respects, the relationship was like a child learning social skills or an immigrant learning a new culture, but if she continued along this path, Dora was going to become another sister-wife, something no one would have ever believed possible.

Typically, the team’s role as deputy US marshals had them freeing folks held by Earth Firsters or just plain bad guys. Missions often came back-to-back, many with little opportunity to plan. Sometimes, a team was sent to convince pockets of stubborn individuals that they simply could not defend their homes, farms, hideouts, or whatever from the inevitable advance of the Sa’arm. In many cases, these folks refused to believe that their country’s defenders could and would scorch the earth tens and hundreds of miles in front of the advancing invaders.

Other missions were designed to extract endangered high CAP volunteers and/or individuals with skills or talents requisitioned by some area of the Confederacy. Even ‘standard’ rescues frequently turned up potential Confederacy volunteers and almost always angry men and women eager to join the Earth Defense Force -- EDF.

The team’s concubines often accompanied their owners in medical, other specialty, or combat roles. The nature of their work required diligent weapons and martial arts training for the sponsors and for the family’s concubines. In some situations, Confederacy weapons like stingers were prohibited, so even those with no prior weapons or unarmed combat training were rapidly becoming proficient in both.

The Confederacy’s hierarchy, like every human slave-owning society before it, feared a slave revolt and placed strict prohibitions on concubines ‘attacking’ sponsors or accessing weapons. Recognizing this fear, Michael had established their household in a virtual compound with its own dojos, firing ranges, classrooms, transporters, and even an armory.

Because the team’s charter was in the United States, they kept to Central time, separating themselves in yet another way. A mission team could assemble and arm itself in minutes -- sometimes seconds -- and be on its way through a transporter to do whatever. The right training and the right weapons were vital; TRUST was essential.