The General sits in the corner of the Air Line car staring at the gritty metal floor. I had been so concerned with boarding, with avoiding further scrutiny, that I had taken no notice of what she did, so long as she kept quiet and walked when pushed. Now that we are underway, the Air Line hurtling along the tracks and the air growing thick with the smell of sweat and breath of many passengers, I look at her.

At her feet, a tiny creature crawls: the wounded warrior ant. It pulls itself around in circles, one of its pincers waving, seeking to fight even as it dies.

‘Why did you take it?’ I ask.

She shrugs and pokes the ant. It swipes at her, attacking blindly.

‘Don’t taunt it,’ I say. ‘It will fight until the end. That’s what they’re bred for.’

She ignores me and continues to goad the ant, letting it roam in wretched circles.

‘Were you ever a child?’ I hear myself ask, over the rushing of the rails.

She doesn’t look at me. ‘I was conscripted at seven. Childhood as a concept was deemed unnecessary.’

‘Unnecessary.’ I repeat the word, to test its reality. No doubt the Army of the First Accord have used that word on their paperwork, stamped it with approval and sent it out to families across the settled planets.

‘What would you have had us do?’ The expression on the General’s face is almost like grief. ‘Should I have waited out the war, weak and unprepared, like your children? Sitting huddled, silenced, kept away from every possibility of action?’ Her lips shake. ‘You would have had others fight and die for me. You would have left me to grow up drenched in the blood of my elders. It was right we took part. It was our fight. Our future. And the Accord let us shape it.’

Deep within me, something trembles at her words. ‘What they did to you was barbaric. I am not going to argue about that.’

‘Worse than what your forces did? Worse than killing thousands of innocents?’ She smiles, cruelly. ‘They gave me a gift. They gave me tactical skills that people like you couldn’t dream of. They made me unassailable. They knew that even the enemy would stop short of attacking a child, or risk being forever shunned by their own. It’s why we’re so valuable. You find it too hard to fight us.’

As if in triumph, she shoves the ant and it falls on its side, its legs twitching, trying to reach her.

‘Pathetic,’ she murmurs.

We are silent after that. What more can we say?