Chapter 1

By the time the rural fire department arrived at the scene, most of the structures had burned, except for a part of the nursery, which was located furthest from the old lab location on the opposite side of the house. What hadn't burned had collapsed and it was only chance that one of the fireman heard the baby crying from under the pile of rubble.

Severely injured in the same disastrous explosion that had orphaned him at the tender age of 12 months, the doctors didn't think he was going to live; he did, but was horribly scarred over 50% of his body, and unable to use his legs.

Most people wanted a healthy baby to adopt but once the couple, which already had a daughter, had seen this special baby boy they felt drawn to him.

Unfortunately, due to complications in the daughter's birth three years before, the mother couldn't have any more children, and his adoption into the family filled the void.

Their three year old daughter, Becky, became his little mother, playmate, confidant, and partner in mischief as they grew.

From the scant records stored in a safety deposit box, the State found that his father and mother had been independent research scientists of some type, their lab had been located alongside their rural home, and the baby's name was Robert Teal.

Too young to remember anything of his birth parents and bereft of any living relatives, the only informational links available were pictures of a man and woman, bank records, deeds, and other dry statistics, which were placed in the hands of a conservator.

Now, admittedly he was only thirteen years old, ugly as sin, and confined to a wheelchair but stupid wasn't part of the resume. Having completed High School via home schooling at the age of eight, opting for continued education via the internet on the computer he had built, he had unofficially completed the requirements for a Bachelor of Science with a double major in Computer Science and Psychology with a minor in Military Sciences. Self-testing by various IQ programs on the net had shown that his IQ appeared un-chartable.

As far as he could ascertain by reading everything available about the Sa'arm, studying every scrap of information he was able to beg, borrow, or carefully steal from the various databases concerning the Confederacy, studying the reports of extractions, sponsors, concubines/slaves, and the choices made during the process, to Robert Burdock, the data did not compute.

The deplorable numbers of wasted lives that had resulted from poor utilization of those resources, caused him to wonder if the lunatics, or in this case the member races of the Confederacy, were truly in charge of the asylum.

To his mind the Confederacy AIs were really the entities in control of the Confederacy, they guided the mind of the military but supposedly the member races were incapable of actually pulling the trigger. In much of the data, the Confederacy AIs actively inhibited most of the effective actions that would have allowed the Humans to prevail against the Sa'arm.

Since Human history had proven repeatedly that slavery as an institution was a failed proposition and since there appeared no form of actual slavery practiced anywhere else in the Confederacy, the conclusion he drew was that none of the other races accepted slavery as a viable option for survival. Why then was it imposed on Humans as a requirement for survival?

It also appeared to him, that if the humans were the only race standing between the Sa'arm and the Confederacy, it stood-to-reason that they were a precious resource but it also appeared that the policies of the Confederacy AIs were at odds with the stated goals, therefore self defeating, and disastrous for Humans.

Roberts only conclusion indicated that the Confederacy AIs, rather than saving Humanity, intended to drain the Earth of the most aggressive, intelligent, and fertile of the species to throw at the Sa'arm in a war of attrition only aimed at attempting to slow the Sa'arm advance.

Meanwhile the Confederacy dug in its collective appendages about providing any advanced technology, but leaving the Sa'arm to eliminate the rest of humanity, and humanity's aggressiveness. It appeared from the available data that the Confederacy was more afraid of the Humans than they were of the Sa'arm.

None of the other Humans seemed cognizant of the facts because they were focused on survival or scrambling for the top of the heap, using the semi-chaos as a grab for power. To Robert that made about as much sense as fighting to be the Captain of the Titanic after it struck the iceberg.

It appeared to him that the indoctrination of all levels of Humanity, which featured the Confederacy plan as the only game in town, would result in the Genocide of the Human race.

Once Robert was certain of his conclusions, he contacted Julia Morgan, his buddy on the distaff side of the Circle, for her analysis of the subject, and after due consideration of the data, Julia concurred with Robert's conclusions. Their next step was to contact the others in their small Circle of trusted friends and intellectual equals.

A one-megaton bomb would have had a magnitude lesser affect.

All of those remaining of the Circle had come to the conclusion early on that it appeared better not to come to the attention of anyone in authority. Just because they were paranoid didn't mean someone wasn't out to get them and a healthy dose of paranoia had insured they stayed out of the clutches of individuals that saw them as a valuable resource to be exploited.

Those individuals that had dropped their guard had soon dropped out of sight ... permanently. He decided to bring Becky, now a high school senior at sixteen, in on it. When Rebecca saw the presentation, her reaction was the same, and she pledged to help in any way she could.

They got together with his parents to lay out his conclusions and the evidence that led him to those conclusions in a detailed presentation. His parents came to the same conclusion without a great deal of debate and pledged their full support.

The others of the Circle managed varying degrees of success with their parents, guardians, or step persons depending on their situations. Some of those individuals were trustworthy, others ... NOT, and others did not have the brains or moral aptitude for either.

The trustworthy group agreed to help, the others weren't allowed to have a clue as to the actions of the Circle members while many of the third group was actually of the opinion that the whole Sa'arm mess was a hoax so they didn't deign to notice or wouldn't allow anything to interfere in their busy lives.

Most of the Circle had never met 'face-to-face, ' only interacting with each other via webcam. All of the members of the Circle had finished high school by home study and most had attained a college degree in their chosen field of interest or had at least studied extensively on various disciplines. Thus the Circle was unique because it could think in ways unthought-of by everyone else. If it had been the 1990's they would have used the phrase, 'Thinking Outside the Box.'

The big question on everyone's mind was, "WHAT" action to take in order to counteract the Confederacy, their AI's, Greedy Politicians, the Military, and all the other idiots that would either try to use them--the Earth First fanatics came to mind, kill them, marginalize them, or gladly try to make a buck by turning them in for a reward if one were offered. After dodging all those bullets, they still had to be concerned with defeating or deflecting the Sa'arm. To this end keeping the actions of the Circle and their supporters' secret from everyone else was paramount.

It was decided that the Circle needed funding. Most members were not wealthy and Robert wasn't either but did have funds in the hands of his conservator, and a loving family that would invest on his behalf, or at least had done so in the past, but the conventional methods would take far too long, and leave a paper/electronic trail for investigators to follow.

To fund their efforts the Circle would have to adopt tactics that might have been thought distasteful, were definitely illegal, but necessary if they were to acquire the required funding in the time remaining.

At first, the Circle managed to accumulate a moderate amount of wealth by siphoning off the revenues from the various slush funds of corrupt politicians, dishonest corporations or CEO's, and corrupt bankers, placing them in the Circle's own offshore accounts after bouncing them through various countries, and shell company accounts to insure the funds were untraceable.

They were very conservative and cautious in these endeavors at first but the need for a larger bankroll, eventually forced the Circle into far more aggressive efforts, and required that they no longer chance interacting directly with any outside entity.