[ He nods, just listening, files away all the information in his head -- and there's a genuine relief in his expression when Ratchet talks about how they've managed to rebuild. And that shifts, again, something quiet and unreadable when Ratchet starts to talk about wiping out humanity. Not them, of course not them, but there's always someone, isn't there. ]

We're a little past Earth, where I come from.

Pre-war, we'd had about eight hundred colonies, and after, well. A lot less than that. [ Under two hundred. ] The Covenant did something we called glassing. Plasma orbital bombardment . . . like terraforming a planet, but in reverse. Literally fusing rock into silica glass. The entire place would be unlivable.

Earth ended up all right for the most part for us, too.