So it turns out that the protagonist's slave conscript status is

non-heritable and ends at the age of 35 (if he lives that long, which looks increasingly unlikely), at which point he'll be sent back home. Doesn't sound like he's getting a pension or anything like adequate mental health care, either before or after (cheaping out on mental health care sounds like a really bad way to get a good fighting army, but what do I know?), and since everybody he grew up with in the slave conscript army is now dead I think it's safe to say that the war is not going well and his last-second escape was a brilliant idea all around... but all the same, "forced term indenture" might be a more accurate term. It's a trivial nicety, but I'm gonna stick with it.

Also, we're finally told that in his particular case his indenture/enslavement/conscription is halfway between a tax and a tribute that his planet pays to the mafia evil empire in exchange for being left alone. It's theoretically a lottery system, but in reality the child soldiers are made up of orphans, delinquents, and kids whose families just don't care about them that much. You have no idea how relieved I was to have cleared that up! Wondering about the specific circumstances was taking up entirely too much brainspace. I don't know how my brain decides what to fixate on when reading, but that was evidently it.

Ain't pragmatics grand?

Mommy: When are we fixing the fence?
Me: Jenn's having a party next month.

Due to the power of pragmatics, everybody involved in that exchange understands that the first sentence answers the second, even though it doesn't sound like it ought to.

You just gotta love those Gricean maxims. Way back in Lives of Christopher Chant our main character finds himself asked why he's buying girl books. He can't explain that they're to give to a girl goddess who lives in another world, so he says "I have a cousin", telling himself that it's okay because he does have a cousin. Well, it's pretty minor as lies go, and harmless, but he knows and the reader knows that he certainly isn't telling the truth, because what he said isn't relevant and he's given his friend no reason to suspect that. It doesn't matter how many cousins he has, the books aren't for any of them.