by Mich Moore
struts, and the other ends looped and fastened around the necks and shoulders of each AI. David, Amadeus, and Bruce stood in the lead positions, while Rose and Sarah brought up the rear. Brady examined each rig, checking for weak points or segments that might bind. Chang then performed his own time-consuming check, making sure that the ropes and straps would not cause any damage to the AI bodies, after which Walters publicly accused him of placing the interests of the AIs before the medical needs of Major Hillerman, Broussard, and the crew. Chang was forced to spend an additional four precious minutes providing a clarification of his actions by saying that while everyone needed to get back across the Illinois border as soon as possible, it was just as important that everyone return unharmed.
After both men had finished their examinations, Powell gave Bautista the go-ahead, and the technician jumped behind the wheel of the RV. Brady rushed on board to make sure that Major Hillerman and Broussard were safely secured. Hillerman was unconscious and strapped to a padded door on the floor while Broussard remained awake and buckled into the only remaining passenger seat.
"Are you comfortable, Mr. Broussard?" he asked.
"Yes."
Brady stepped back outside and told Powell, "They're ready."
Powell nodded. "Okay, everyone! Eyes up here!" Z, Roger, Kwolski, Derek, Walters, Chang, Kuiper, and the Rangers fell in line behind him. "Here's the plan. When I give the first signal—" He demonstrated holding up a fist with his index finger extended. "—Bautista is going to put the RV in neutral. When I give the second signal and give the command to gee—" He held up a fist with his index and middle fingers extended. "— That's when the DATs will know to shift into first gear. Everybody with me so far?"
All of the men nodded.
"After I give the third signal—" He raised both closed fists high in the air. "—the DATs will quickly upshift into seventh gear—"
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, all five DATs lunged against their harnesses.
The men scattered.
Powell jumped off to the side, frantically waving his arms and shouting at the AIs, "STOP! STOP! STOP!"
The RV jerked forward about three meters and stopped. The DATs were still straining against their harnesses, stretching the traces to their full lengths.
Powell quickly ran around the back of the RV and up to the driver's side window. He yelled at Bautista. "PUT IT IN DRIVE AND TAKE OFF THE PARKING BRAKE! NOW!!!"
Bautista slammed the stem shift to "D" and unlatched the brake. The RV flew forward, almost knocking Powell off his feet. With a dirt-churning screech of the tires, the big vehicle shot across the ground and headed straight for the two opposing tree lines that Brady had mapped out. Once it reached that point, Bautista centered the RV perfectly between them. Within minutes the RV was just a speck on the moonlit horizon. A dust trail soon arose and obscured any further viewing.
The remaining men slowly walked down the same path that the RV had taken. The moon began to move quickly out of apogee, as if in a hurry to be elsewhere. Real night soon settled in, and the sky began to glitter with a billion stars.
Derek, who found himself walking next to Kwolski, marveled at the celestial display. "Wow. I've never seen so many stars in my life."
Kwolski looked up with a filthy face. "It is an amazing sight."
The CIA agent suddenly pointed. "You see that fuzzy pink star beneath the Big Dipper, to the left of the handle?"
"Uh, yes. I see it," Kwolski replied after a moment of searching.
"That's Tara's star. I'm sure it already has a name, but from now on it's called Tara."
"Okay."
"I'm sure she'd like that."
Bradley led the DAT team across the border into Illinois at midnight. The men were greeted with hazmat teams flown in from Scott. After they were stripped and their bodies washed from head to toe several times, they were given potassium iodide pills. Nuclear scientists from Quantico had quickly determined that the men had probably suffered exposure from the bombs' fallout of no more than 400,000 microsieverts. While those levels were not considered to be immediately fatal, Fields and Higgins both insisted that all precautions be taken and that every member of the team be watched around the clock for any signs of radiation sickness: fatigue, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, or bleeding. When none of these symptoms presented themselves after two weeks, the men were flown back to Redstone and kept on medically supervised bed rest for the next four weeks. Major Hillerman and Neal Broussard were kept at a private medical facility at Scott for almost one month while doctors treated their unusual burns. It took a series of Army specialists to come up with a likely culprit as the cause of the severe tissue damage done by the "firefly" bullets. The report sent to Matt Grodin suggested that "radicalized photons" had somehow infiltrated the bodies of Major Hillerman, Neal Broussard, and Tara McCarthy, and then burned their way through skin, flesh, and in Ms. McCarthy's case, skull bone. The Advance South had used common light as a lethal weapon. The report sent ripples of horror through the ghostly corridors of the White House and the Pentagon. If the US-AS could turn light into a weapon, what else were they capable of doing? Battle plans based on highly accurate assessments of the US-AS's capabilities were promptly thrown out and a new batch of combat analysts brought in to hastily create updated reports and recommendations. In just one day, the roaring lions of civilian unrest, mass psychoses and organized crime became as mewling kittens as this new and terrifying threat now commanded the American government's attention.
Three days after her death, an Advance South general from Kentucky had Tara McCarthy's body flown to Scott AFB. US-AS soldiers had finally found it two days earlier where the DAT team had left it. The young agent had been cleaned and dressed and placed in a simple pine coffin. Tucked beneath her folded hands was an itemized bill in the amount of four hundred dollars for "Processing." Allan Chang and her only surviving relative, a cousin from Duluth, accompanied the body to Virginia for burial. The funeral was attended by Frederick Fields, Susan Boward, Colonel Richard Higgins, Allan Chang, Major Robert Hillerman, Lieutenant Timothy Brady, and Derek Scott. The DATs were allowed to spend some time with the body in private before the service. Before her coffin was placed into the ground, Fields read aloud a short letter from President Douglas Haverson. In short, it said that the International Astronomical Union had unanimously agreed to add the designation "Tara" to Galaxy M51, the larger of a pair of galaxies that appear beneath the handle of the Big Dipper in the night sky.
On the same day that Tara McCarthy was laid to rest, Herschel Stevens hanged himself in his bedroom closet.
The five uninjured alligators recovered from Donald Daley's truck were shipped to Redstone, and after one month of quarantine they were resettled in Farmer Johnson's north pasture.
6
Due to the minor body damage and radiation contamination that the five AIs had suffered in Kentucky, the decision was made to decommission the robots and make them available for private ownership. A conditional auction was held amongst the governments of the G5 nations. The Japan Energy Company submitted the most comprehensive proposal for their support and use. Eight weeks after the Kentucky Affair, the plans were finalized, and the DATs prepped for transfer to JEC's remote fission reactor in Santa Clara, Chile.
After intense negotiations involving Voode and Grodin, JEC agreed to allow Derek Scott and Lieutenant Brady to assist with the AI transfer to Santa Clara. JEC also agreed to allow quarterly visits by various Redstone personnel so that their socialization could continue.
Basking in the glow of an extravagant going-away party thrown by Fields and his Washington staff, the DATs and their companions lifted from the earth on a clear morning in an Army Boeing 767 and flew to their new home near the bottom of the world.
The proceeds from the DAT sale were originally slated to reimburse DARPA for the two billion dollars in aggregate spending on the five Advanced Technology projects. However, when the outgoing governor of Nevada, Virginia Ballard, got wind of the tran
saction via the mistress that she unwittingly shared with John Voode, she instructed her attorney general to sue Washington on behalf of the state's FOVOC organization. Haverson's administration quietly settled out of court for an undisclosed sum that not only pleased those FOVOC families with direct ties to the original MIT project, but plumped Governor Ballard's empty coffers with enough war chest funds to almost guarantee her a comfortable run for the congressional seat the following year. The editor of the Las Vegas Tribune arrived at the same conclusion in his postmortem piece on the life and untimely death of Governor Virginia Ballard in a car accident just two brief weeks after the FOVOC victory.
Based on the mission reports and the performance evaluations submitted by Allan Chang, Major Hillerman, Christian Kuiper, and Marcin Z, AIs Bruce and Rose were chosen to serve as the prototypes for the second generation of DATs. These six new robots would be assembled in Detroit and outfitted with the full weapons package. Their preference laws would be based upon both the mind and body brains of Bruce and Rose with an eight-degree separation of personality diffusion in the master brain chip and with on-demand fractal growth. Because the militarized DAT had to be able to take direct orders from superiors on the battlefield, by necessity the