Surplus On Loan

    It was the last step in life for an obsolete bolo. Loaned out to a Concordiat ally, left to guard the backdoor against the Deng while the rest of the Dinochrome fought, and died, against the Melkonians.

    Well, SOL-0045 managed to stop the Deng but still he remained, Surplus On Loan. As the once constitutionalist planet, now cut off from the Concordiat and the rest of civilization, slowly fell into the trap of dictatorship and confiscation in the face of decay.

It Was Simpler When

    It had been simpler fighting the Deng. Anything Deng was the enemy. But as old friends become rebels against the legal government, the government to which he is Surplus On Loan, SOL-0045 finds himself in the ultimate trap: caught in the sharp cleft between ethics and duty.

Then It Became Simple Again

    On the final mission that would crush the resistance and end for all time the brutal civil war, SOL finds himself in a moral dilemna, facing a small boy who refuses to stand aside and let the imposing war machine pass.

    And SOL finds that, for once, "it is my duty" is not enough.

    He must struggle through the long night to find out, when mission and morals collide, whether, in fact, bolos have a soul.

    And, if they do, whether they can be redeemed.

    From a story fragment by Keith Laumer.

All text formatting errors are wholly the fault of Jim Baen and the way he delivers our fix. :-)