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

who built Stonehenge.”
    Geary squinted at the objects. “They look like ground fighting vehicles.”
    “They are. Or, they were.” The female steward sighed. “At one time, many weapons of war were built with totally robotic controls. They could and did operate without any human intervention.”
    “Autonomous robotics? What were those people thinking?”
    “That they could cede control and yet maintain it,” she replied, her voice growing caustic, then taking on the cadence of someone reciting words often repeated. “Those broken machines were Caliburn Main Battle Tanks, part of the Queen’s Royal Hussars. Someone managed to override and alter their programming, causing the most massive and destructive armored vehicles ever constructed to break out of their garrison and head for this site, with instructions to destroy the ancient stones here. Much of the automated equipment that could have stopped them was disabled by computer viruses and worms planted by the same people. Fortunately, humans carrying antitank weaponry were able to destroy the vehicles though at considerable cost in life. The last of the Caliburns, the spearhead of the attack, were knocked out just before they reached the stones.”
    She waved toward the crumbling metal-and-ceramic monsters. “They were left here, as a monument to the heroism of those who stopped them and as a reminder of the folly of entrusting our safety to something incapable of loyalty, morality, or wisdom.” Her voice changed, losing the tone of rote recitation. “You don’t use such weapons, then? In your wars among the stars?”
    “No,” Geary replied. “Every once in a while someone proposes it, and a few times it has been tried with experimental units, but the results tend to be similar to what happened here. As erratic as humans can be, they are still immensely more reliable and trustworthy than anything that can be reprogrammed in a few seconds or mistake a glitch in its programming for reality.”
    He knew he should be focused on the ancient monument, but for some reason he couldn’t explain, the wrecks of the armored vehicles held his attention even as he and Tanya were given a quick tour while the setting sun drew long shadows off the standing stones. It seemed only a few minutes had passed before they were ceremoniously escorted back into their shuttle. “Can we fly low over that?” Geary asked as the shuttle lifted.
    The pilot gave him a startled look, but nodded. “It might get me in trouble, but I’ll say you insisted,” she added with a grin.
    “Why were you surprised by my request?”
    “Because not many who come here want to see that. Most would rather that ugly pile of rust and high-tech pottery was gone, but it’s an historic site just like the big stones, so they’re stuck with it. Me, I’m glad it’s here.”
    “Why?” Tanya asked.
    “Something my dad said when he brought me here the first time,” the pilot said, twisting her controls to bring the shuttle in a slow pivot over the ruins of the archaic armored vehicles. “I looked at them old, dead monsters, and I said,
It’s a good thing they stopped them
. And my dad looked at me and said,
No, it’s a good thing they
had
to stop them because if they hadn’t, we might have made ones a lot bigger before we learned our lesson
.”
    “You’ve got a smart dad,” Tanya remarked.
    “A-yeah.” The pilot grinned at her. “He wanted me to work at the law, like he does. But he accepted my being a pilot when I said it was that or I’d ship out for the stars.
They’re all crazy out there,
he said. You lot don’t look too crazy to me, though.”
    “You don’t know us very well,” Geary said.
     • • • 
    ANOTHER reception committee awaited them at the castle. “Here’s where you’ll spend your last night on Earth,” the pilot said as they left her, laughing at what Geary guessed must have been a joke. He went through the process of introductions and greetings, the faces and