Koma’s been on the front for a month now. He doesn’t know the names of half the men in his platoon: they’re all new, and after two weeks, the new ones started looking all alike.

Most days he lies in his rabbithole and thinks about his mother and Megeet, back on the Free Island, saving their tin cans. Will they recognize him when he comes home? Or will his gaunt face and military trim be too strange?

He wishes, sometimes and treasonously, that his ears had never been cropped: that they could hang long, over his shoulders, just like a Continental.