[ Battle over resources tends to sound a lot more palatable to strangers than some jagoff with a hard-on for Roman history is trying to forcibly take control of the only substantial power- and water- source in a three-hundred mile radius and I want to kill him first. Military or not, that tends not to go over well.

Len doesn't bother hiding the way his eyebrows climb into his hairline as Kaidan begins describing an allegedly hellish location that strongly resembles the Mojave Wasteland. Sometimes, the courier forgets that there are people who grew up in vastly different environments. It's a little bit like talking to a vault dweller. ]

Don't have much choice to the contrary. It's all anybody knows.

[ He supposes there are plenty of locations in the desert that he would call peaceful - beautiful, even - that someone like Kaidan might clock as desolate, hollow places. For all the damage it can do, there's something striking about the glow of an old fallout field in a nuclear crater, humming with energy and light in the middle of the night. From a respectable distance, of course. ]

Don't know that I'd call it awful, either. Makes livin' hard, but I think it makes for more resilient people.

[ Len taps the countertop thoughtfully for a moment. ]

How does a whole galaxy go to war with itself?