The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast Read Free Page A

see you.”
    Tanya laughed. “You’re so sweet when you’re being delusional.” Despite her warm gear, she shivered as a gust of wind hit. “The locals think this is warmer? I think we’ve done enough sentry duty on this wall. I’ve been spoiled by spending so much time inside climate-controlled spacecraft. What’s that last place we’re supposed to see today?”
    “Stonehenge. A religious site.”
    “Oh.” She smiled again. “Good. I need to pay my respects before we leave Old Earth.”
    “I don’t think whoever built Stonehenge worshipped the same things we do,” Geary pointed out.
    “They didn’t use the same names,” Desjani objected. “That doesn’t mean the same things didn’t matter to them or that they weren’t trying to grasp the infinite in the same ways we do.”
    “I guess so.” He took a deep breath, looking down and grimacing. “This old world bears a lot of scars that were inflicted by human wars and other forms of destruction. Have we learned anything? Or are we going to keep repeating the same mistakes?”
    “We’re going to do our best, Admiral. But the wars aren’t over. Not by a long shot.”
     • • • 
    WHEN their shuttle lifted from a field near the wall, Geary watched with surprise as the Dancer craft shot upward and kept going. He hauled out his comm unit and called
Dauntless
. “General Charban? Can you find out what the Dancers are doing? They’re supposed to be following us.”
    “And they’re not,” Charban had no trouble guessing. The actions of the aliens doubtless always made sense to the Dancers themselves, but humans had found them often hard to predict or understand. “I’ll try to find out what they’re doing.”
    A few minutes later, as the shuttle split the sky en route its next destination, Charban called back. “All the Dancers will say is
go our ship
. They’re returning to one of their ships.”
    “You understand them as well as anyone,” Geary said. “Are they unhappy or bored or what? Any guesses?”
    “What’s the next location they were scheduled to see?”
    “We’re going to a place called Stonehenge. An ancient religious site.”
    “Religious?” Charban asked. “That might be the reason. The Dancers have never responded when we tried to discuss spiritual beliefs. Maybe they think such things are private or secret. Let me check what we sent them . . . yes, we told them that Stonehenge is a place where humans talked to something bigger than themselves. That’s the nearest we can come to saying religious site. They may not feel it is appropriate for them to be there. That’s my best guess.”
    “Thank you, General. Let me know if the Dancers say anything else. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
    The massive rocks at the place called Stonehenge didn’t look that impressive to eyes accustomed to what modern equipment and modern engineering could do. Imagining humans constructing this place with bare hands, muscle, and the most primitive of tools made it feel much more remarkable. Moreover, as Geary left the shuttle where it had set down close to the ancient circle of stones, he felt an even greater sense of age here than at the wall.
    “This is
old
,” Tanya said. “Look, there’s a flame.” She walked toward a fire pit to one side of the stones and knelt.
    Geary stayed back, giving her privacy and looking around. The locals who had been waiting for them were approaching with the strange combination of wariness and welcome that many people on Old Earth seemed to feel toward the distant children of this world.
    Beyond them . . . “What is that?” he asked the first woman who approached him, her coat adorned with the crest those on this island wore to identify themselves as custodians of the past.
    She looked over her shoulder, then made an apologetic gesture. “A different kind of monument, Admiral. Perhaps, in a way, a monument to the things people worshipped in a time in the past for us but in the far future to those