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"You're slowing down, Dodo Meiks. What happened to the famed Caledonian liver?"
"Still here. Just learned when to ease off the throttle. Something you Combine vets never seemed to grasp."
"Throttle control's overrated, boy. Back then, you either floored it or you went nowhere at all. The universe had fewer shades of grey."
"And fewer safety features."

"We had our own safety features - luck and ignorance. I tell you Meiks, the Great War was the galaxy's roughest entrance exam on optimism. Every sortie we went out, we were pretty sure we weren't coming back. And when we did...that was a damn fine day."
"I was eight years old when the war ended. My childhood was grown-ups waving banners, talking about heroics. Didn't make a bit of sense to me. My father used to say the war broke us. Every year afterward, it felt like we were trying to fix something we couldn't even see."
"Sometimes I think we only fought that hard because war was all we had left."

"Did you believe in it, then? The Combine dream, the ideals, whatever they sold you?"
"At first. When you're young, you want to believe in something bigger. Order, stability, strength. But after enough fighting, ideals get thin fast. Turns into just trying to make it through the next battle."
"Is that why you left it behind?"
"They left us first. Combine stopped being Combine the moment it couldn't protect its people anymore. After the war, everything changed. Suddenly you had to pick a side within a side. And now...? I'm too old for that kind of politics. But I suppose every generation has its own battles. Maybe your generation has the harder fight - cleaning up after mine."

"Funny, I think Stuart would say the same thing about mine."
"Hah! Stuart Ross. He's still new to this life. Give him time, he'll get bitter like us. Or dead. Hopefully just bitter. Now quit talking and drink. Next round's on the loser, and I'll warn you, I've never lost to a pilot."
"And I've never lost to a Combine fossil."