This chapter's super short. I apologize! The next ones will be longer, I promise.
"Ronon," Colonel Carter reprimanded, a large bite of blue Jell-o jiggling midair on her spoon, "I know that you hate doing the paperwork, but everyone has to do it. Recounting the events that took place in a mission report is almost as important as the actual missions. The details of this last one in particular are a little hazy and the IOA," she pronounced the three letters clearly and sardonically, "want full accounts from everyone involved."
He reached for something in the back of his teeth with his tongue and was about to speak when a loud voice erupted from behind him.
"E'coba!"
He turned around in his seat to see Emma with her hands in the air, a hand of playing cards laid out on the table in front of her. Her face was bright and she wore a wide smile.
"E'coba," the other people seated at the table with her kept repeating. All of the patches on their shoulders were the same: a gold horizontal bar flanked on top and bottom by two dark red bars. It looked like they were teasing her, "¿E'coba?"
"Ay esssssssscoba," she exaggerated, "¿Mejor?" she laughed.
"Chilena," one of them joked, hitting her lightly on the arm.
"Española, mexicana, chilena, gringa… Da igual. Gané, yo gané," she said haughtily, shaking her shoulders in a small victory dance.
Did she ever work? he wondered.
"Ronon?" Carter said slowly.
"Got distracted," he said accusatorily, turning his head back to her and taking a drink. He leaned back in his seat.
"She's a fun girl. Sweet too," Carter observed over Ronon's shoulder, "I think a lot of the younger marines and airmen have been trying to gather up the courage to talk to her."
"She's young," Ronon countered, nostrils flaring. Obnoxious. Loud. Immature.
"This is true," Carter nodded, observing the card game that had resumed, "But you can't deny that she's a beautiful girl," she argued, glancing at him, then back to the other table.
He shrugged. "I guess," he muttered, running a hand up and down his bicep.
"She's also one of the most brilliant minds on this expedition."
He tried not to listen too carefully, distracting himself by spinning his gun in his hand under the table and flicking the settings back and forth from stun to kill.
Carter paused, the Jell-o still wiggling dangerously on her spoon. "She doesn't show it, though. It's why Daniel—Dr. Jackson recommended her," she thought out loud. "Most of her introduction at the briefing was a lie…or at least, a grave understatement of her capabilities. She speaks at least ten more languages than she acknowledged."
Stun. Kill.
"Maybe not fluently according to her own standards, but well enough according to anyone else's. And the Ancient and Wraith she knows…she learned all of them in less than three months." She took a breath. Emma discarded a card onto one of the piles in the center of the table.
Kill. Stun.
"She won't admit to it, but she's better versed than anyone in them, especially Wraith, better than Daniel even," she revealed. "He told me so himself."
"Why would she do that?" Ronon asked, his eyes still locked on his blaster.
Stun. Kill. Stun. Kill.
"Lie? Or…be so modest?" Carter clarified.
Ronon let the gun fall limp in his hand and slightly lifted his head to look at Carter.
"She's young," Carter echoed, finally looking back at him as she ate her Jell-o.
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