20th March 2186 (Earth Calendar)
16:00 zulu
Fifty Kilometers North-East of Vancouver
Anderson had always considered himself in acceptable shape for his age but then the Reapers had come; His fitness wasn't the same as it used to be and it was showing. His feet where raw and his legs ached from the brutal pace his rescuer was setting.
"Admiral, we've got another ten klicks until we're back at base."
"I know; I need five minutes.
Too damn used to hot meals and soft beds."
Getting out of Vancouver had been hell; Elements of the SA marines and Canadian army where fighting a constant street battle with the Reaper troops, mostly a mix of husks and cannibals.
Anderson and the troops he'd managed to gather managed to slowly push toward la the outskirts, where the fighting became gradually less intense. The Reapers where harvesting the most amount of people for the least amount of effort expended.
"Bloody machines."
"Sir?"
"Sorry, I was thinking out loud.
Where are you from son? That's not a Canadian accent."
"Wales sir."
"You don't sound Welsh either; British certainly but not Welsh."
"Ever seen a Turian trying to understand a Geordie sir?"
There is was, the effortless slip back into a South Wales sing-song accent.
"Australian, but I understand your point."
Humanity had more accents than the other races, most likely because compared to the rest of the galactic community they where still relatively young and things hadn't 'normalised' yet. The Systems Alliance had actually had to run ' accent standardisation' classes for recruits to make sure they could be understood by their allies in combined operations.
"Come on Lieutenant, lets get moving."