Second entry in Grainthology Vol. 1 (not counting the bonus story). Also found in The Library of Guy. Meta information, such as length, can be found in both those places, though Grainthology Vol. 1 offers more detail.

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Most weapons end up in the boneyards or in scrapheaps; these ones come home with you. The plus side to this is that you couldn't get better property defence if you tried. They make great friends, too.

-Summary, Grainthology Vol. 1

Note: This setting is brand new insofar as publishing. At its core it's about the awesomeness (and inherent silliness) of tank-themed autonomous mecha, however that's not to say it's completely unserious. I hope to use it more in the future, so do tell if that sounds interesting to you!

Disclaimer: This setting assumes some surface-level knowledge of common tank models to draw comparison with. However, I do not believe this is strictly necessary to understand the important details and plot of this story. Even then, a search engine can fill in the gaps quite easily.

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Should one follow a star with feet on the ground they’ll soon find themselves standing on exactly the spot they started. It’ll take them on a winding journey across land and sea, but the ending is all the same as it began. Instead, one must first follow that which they share the world with. Mountains, trees, rivers, and the wind. Only once one has mastered the surface may they finally begin to chase stars.

Sabrina often thought about the skies above on those nights she couldn’t coax herself to sleep. She knew that one day, if not there yet, the sky would be not a distant canvas, a banner advertising cosmic delights far out of reach, but instead a step which she’d have to decide whether to take or not. So long as she could keep her mind sharp the future was a buffet of opportunity.

Irony was, she had past never much been one for buffets, literal or metaphorical.

How could she be? She’s a thirty-tonne war machine.

Lying out on cool grass atop a hill amidst the midwestern fields she so often roamed, she raised an armoured hand out in front of her face. Between her gunmetal fingers she tried in vain to scoop out a part of the cosmos, a sample of the future. One to hold close and cherish. Yet, as had always been, it remained distant.

It’ll be close someday, she thought. She turned her turret towards the farmhouse, the little palace ruling its tiny domain of a hundred hectares. A single light was on, the one in the kitchen. She chuckled, a rough metallic sound, knowing that in the morning she’d be ribbing on the old man living there for his forgetful housekeeping.

She lived for a cause, in was in her nature. One day she’d take on a cause for which she’d look upwards, not to rain fire upon an enemy just over the next ridge but to finally leave those earthly horizons behind entirely. In the meantime, though, her cause was to spend the years she could with the man in that quaint white wooden dwelling.

He was her commander, the closest of her former handlers.

A quarter of a century ago, when Hitler had fancied himself an empire of his own model perfection, she had been built in the great factories of America to help take the fight back to Europe’s western territories. A fraction the armoured force, her kind, commonly called as “Autofighters”, were nonetheless an invaluable asset when the fields funneled the battle into tight streets and tall buildings, as had been discovered with their invention during the Great War. The ability to sidestep danger, literally, should not be underestimated when dodging Panzerfausts and sliding through narrow alleys. Virtually every model of turreted tank received an equivalent forged in humanoid form – standardization, where it can be achieved, is worth more than gold in the matters of such otherwise unique weapons.

However, with giving a war machine life (piloting them with soldiers proved surprisingly more difficult than making a tweaked electrical facsimile of the human brain), one must account for the needs of a living being. These needs came not in the form of hunger for food and drink, as these living machines consumed fuel and spare parts much like any other machine, but from the simple fact that they were people. People who, in spite of their stronger convictions and naturally nigh-invincible resolve, needed guidance and companionship to lead them from the clockwork of factories to the torn earth and choking smog of war. As a tank has a crew, so does an autofighter; yet unlike for a tank the autofighter’s crew does not ride inside their steel beast but rather lead it from the ground as handlers.

The autofighter provides the firepower and dreadnought determination, while the handlers provide the wisdom and maintenance to keep them going.

Sabrina, as her handlers had named her, became closest to her commander over the course of her tenure in battle. Though she cared deeply for all her comrades (while mourning those she lost), and awaited her other former handlers’ occasional visits with great anticipation, when the time came for her to enter retirement she knew who she’d be going off with.

Now, back in the USA over twenty years later, she counts the years until she loses him too.

Out of battle, finally, she knew that in all likelihood she would outlive her commander. After all, all an autofighter needs to preserve their life indefinitely is their electronic brain intact – and a power source to keep it running, of course. This near-certainty of eventual loneliness in a world past her body’s technological relevance, a mere M40A3E8 at a time when M600s and AT-64s were pointing guns at each other over in Europe, kept her up into the late hours sometimes. But, as luck would have it, therein lay the remedy: the stars.

Where two lives would end another would have the chance to begin. Her future.

So, in the meantime, she’d enjoy this one as much as she mechanically could. Out on a farm in the middle of nowhere with her best friend in the world.

She sat up, propping herself on her arms behind her. Towards the pond her sights turned, and just past it the cornfield. In the dark of the moonless night, she could hardly see the bumps and potholes in the dirt road running alongside them – at least, not without her night vision, a perk of living in the year 1970.

Flipping the device on, conveniently embedded in her gunsight, she surveyed the worn trail. As she expected, there was nothing. She wasn’t really sure what she was doing, playing nightguard on the property deemed safest in the region (no doubt due to her simple presence alone), nevertheless her watch was unbreakable. Or, rather, it was for about four minutes.

Growing bored, she lowered herself back onto the (now greatly flattened) grass and drew her boxy legs up to her sloping breastplate. While autofighters don’t get cold in the same manner humans do, only really noticing low temperatures when fluid lines burst and parts begin to seize, they retain a number of habitual rituals from their interactions with their human handlers. Seeking warm places to sleep is one of those behaviours.

Content with her new position, she closed the shutters over her various optics adorning her turret – gunsight, rooftop, and cupola - and drifted off into a long overdue slumber.

There was rattling by the front gates.

Her optics shot open, but she knew better than to spring to her feet. Such an action would be noisy, especially seeing as it’d require more energy than her batteries could supply her with. If her engine rumbled alive, it’d give her away without a doubt.

Slowly she shifted her turret, making good use of her adjustable-tilt “neck” turret ring mounting to get the source of the noise within her crosshairs.

Just within the gates was a darkly dressed figure. They wore all-black clothing, mask included, and carried a heavy bag in one hand with a crowbar in the other. They looked this way and that, wary as they crept closer to the farmhouse.

The farmhouse where Sabrina’s commander was sound asleep.

Despite the potential gravity of the situation, she couldn’t help but be flabbergasted. Did this trespasser not realize they were waltzing into the territory of a colossal engine of war? Were they stupid? Everyone over in town knew Sabrina was a total sweetheart, but they were also well aware that should push come to shove she would fight with fearsome skill and power; she’d proven as much during WWII and had the decorations to show for it.

She had a dilemma. On the one hand, this intruder could pose a threat to the most important thing then inhabiting her world. On the other hand, merely crossing into another’s property did not immediately warrant death, even if a threat to others. In her view, willingness to kill does not equal murder, so, unless they truly went too close for comfort, she’d rather avoid seriously harming them. Additionally, simply wiping them off the face of the planet with a high explosive round from where she already lay would wake her commander, create a huge mess to clean up (a process her commander had long grown sick of during the war), and very probably bring several very angry policemen to their doorstep.

She hatched her plan.

Slinking down the hill, careful to not drain her batteries, she set herself in the muddy ditch running beside the dusty driveway. She’d need a bath later, but that was a price worth paying for what she was about to do.

Within minutes the wary interloper had reached the portion of path adjacent her silent steel frame. Shrouded by the dark and hidden by the depression, they didn’t see her. They were oblivious to what they had put themselves in arm’s reach of.

At just the right moment, when the invader was a mere stone’s throw apart from her resting spot, she pulled herself out of the ditch and onto the path ahead of them. Not quickly, not slowly, just the right speed for the unfortunate visitor to catch sight of a terrible dark shape growing tall and broad against the starry heavens behind.

On one side was the lowly trespasser. On the other, standing two storeys taller, was Sabrina and her worlds.

The winner was clear.

The now-panicked interloper took off sprinting as fast as their shaking legs could carry them. Several times they stumbled and nearly tripped upon dips and rises they could not see in the suffocating blackness of the rural night.
Sabrina, on the other hand, could see every one of them.

Now was the time. Her engine roared to life and with that newly restored energy she gave chase. It should go without saying that she’s never the sort to needlessly run someone down, especially when she already holds the advantage so completely, but she’d be lying if she claimed she was entirely above leveraging her size and power to prove a point now or again.

Here, she was reminding the world why you don’t take chances threatening an autofighter’s cause.

Along past the pond she chased the diminutive figure. In an attempt to escape their pursuer they even leapt off the road, nearly falling into the water. Instead, they scrambled on the side of the slope, growing increasingly frantic as their slowed movements coincided with the rapidly approaching thunder of an M40’s footfalls. Eventually they reached the edge of the cornfield and dove right in.

Sabrina hadn’t quite predicted that. She’d expected the person to flee the property, not hide. They’d likely surmised that she lived on the farm and thus would be less willing to destroy her and her commander’s crop just to catch them.

“Tricky, aren’t you?” she growled devilishly. An almost scratchy sound, every M40 (like nearly all other autofighters throughout history) was equipped with a voice box, but it was up to the individual autofighter to learn how to use it properly. She had perfected her own voice during the war, producing a slightly higher and distinctly feminine tone that she thought fit her personality quite nicely. Despite that, though, she could unlearn it for moments like this where the raw vocal scraping of the M40 would be more appropriate.

Within the cornstalks she could hear a muffled whimpering. She was having her intended effect; however, they were still moving further in, further out of reach.

She didn’t want to stay waiting for them to finally leave the safety of the corn all night - even artificial brains need rest – but she also didn’t want the intruder to get away with only traumatic tales of a nightmarish midnight chase to learn from.

Her salvation came in the form of a gift from her commander.

She’d never noticed them before, but at many points within the cornfield there were voids, places where no crops had been planted. They were about the right size and spacing for her to step though them, should she be careful.

She chuckled. The corn had always been her commander’s deal, she tended to the wheat instead, but even then he’d still been thinking to accommodate her.

Through the corn she floated, listening carefully for the rustling of leaves, watching closely for the swaying of stalks. After a minute or so of scanning she’d found her quarry. They were attempting to play dead. She parted the corn around them, giving her full view of them and them full view of her. In that moment she switched on her spotlights, illuminating them both.

She saw a cowering lump of regret that’d learned to not enter others’ homes without asking.

They saw a terrible, olive-drab beast painted with the most horrible grin of razor-sharp teeth staring down at them hungrily.

For the umpteenth time she pondered the irony of her handlers giving her such malicious-looking designs when her personality was so friendly. She shrugged internally; it was just part of her now.

Turning her attention back out towards the quivering flesh below, she spoke. “Kindly, do not resist.”

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When morning came and old commander Roselle sat himself upon his porch to sip his breakfast soup, a recipe Sabrina’s old ammunition specialist had given him while fighting in France, he was mildly surprised to find that Sabrina was nowhere to be found. Usually by this time in the morning she’d have set herself up by the porch to converse with him about their nights. Often, she’d tell him of dreams she had or wildlife she’d spotted when she couldn’t sleep.

Well, this time she really did do that, she just took a bit longer to get there and the wildlife she’d seen was of a bit of a different sort.

From over the hill she came, limp body of a human slung over her shoulder.

At first Roselle was alarmed, he’d feared she’d killed someone by accident (if it had been intentional then either it’d gotten truly serious, or that was no longer Sabrina), but calmed a bit when he realized they were still breathing, just passed out from exhaustion.

She’d told him of the night before, how she’d toyed with them to send a message in chasing them through the cornfield, and how they’d had to wait until dawn pinned under her multi-tonne arm for lack of a rope to tie them up with.

He was astonished. But, at the same time, not. Sure, it didn’t happen every day, but what she’d told him was as Sabrina a story as any other. Protective, not a hint of genuine malice, yet nevertheless with a helping of mischief when she could find the excuse.

By the time she had finished recounting the prior night all he could bring himself to do was call the police and have this burglar (as they found out they were) arrested.

And with that, another day was spent.

Well spent, Sabrina thought.

Very well spent.