"Betans? You'll need to give me the run-down on the major colonial players out here," Kaidan requests as an aside, with all the tacit assumptions of an earthborn son that of course humanity's homeworld is at the centre and everyone else has just developing homestead on a planetary scale.

"But... yeah, aliens. Twelve other species we regularly rub shoulders with, so you can see my surprise at there only being humans here. We got over the First Contact War pretty quickly, which is just as well." What ease there was in Kaidan's tone falters, then vanishes entirely, as the major looks weary and falls silent. How, exactly, to sum up the Reaper War without sounding insane?