A number of them:
- The whole thing, seeing as happy optimistic Halo Jones goes through some serious Break the Cutie as well as Despair Event Horizon at certain points.
- The death of Brinna and Ludy becoming one of the Drummers.
- The reveal that Rodice went back to her original home, unable to conquer her fear. Made all the more so by how there's no indication the two ever talk again after Halo angrily hangs up, with the time skip also showing that Halo believes her to probably be dead by now.
- The death of the rebel, who turned out to be a Child Soldier only 11 years old at most. The little girl left dead and abandoned on the dirt not even buried, as those who did the deed go into denial about this, insisting she surely must have been much older. Until -
- Halo: "The sniper got older all the way home...and by the time we reached base she'd practically died of old age."
- Halo and Toy have both signed up for the army and are fighting a war in a remote region of a remote planet. Their unit gets ambushed on their first real sortie and all the soldiers except Toy and Halo are killed. Toy is injured, so Halo helps her limp along, and eventually fashions a stretcher so she can drag Toy to their HQ, keeping a determinedly positive attitude all the while despite the grim circumstances. And then she arrives and tells the medic to attend to Toy, and the medic takes one look at Toy and says "How long has she been dead?" Halo's answer: a quietly stunned "What?"
- This one was almost certainly pinched from All Quiet on the Western Front. Steal from the best!
- Glyph. No-one being able to remember their existence even after they died to save Halo's life, after having spent so long trying to interact with her in vain. Each moment of that also being a tearjerker.
- When the gravity fails in the mess hall, with Halo meeting eyes with some poor doomed soldier as they realise they're not going to make it out in time.
- The death of Exxon, trying to help save Mona only to herself get killed just as she nearly makes it through the door herself.
- Who can forget the scene where Life Sentence kills herself. What makes this more heartbreaking is that she tells Halo that with the war over, she felt her life held no more meaning. Her words, along with what itself, rattle Halo badly as she realises she's not sure she can answer that herself either.
- Life Sentence: "What's the point of me?"
- The What the Hell, Hero? (with the hero status dubious at best) given by the Cetacean Minister to humanity, about the state their warring left the populace of Moab in. Leaving all who hear it feel utterly ashamed.
