Chapter Seven

The hut has a single window directly across from its only door.  Its walls, even under the window, are lined with shelves of food being stored in either baskets made of woven grass or brick-colored clay pots.  And in the middle of the room is a table, undoubtedly for food preparation and just some place to temporarily put the baskets of stuff for inventory or whatever until it got its permanent home on one of the shelves, made of what looked to be stripped, polished, and carved white maple—alien white maple.  Each side of the wooden table has an equally handmade wooden chair, also made of the alien white maple.  Well, each side had had a chair—Kenmore looked down at the broken remains of the one she had thrown at the door, which had gotten the thing to open about an inch.  But Sheppard had put a stop to that real quick.  Then she looks back up at the door.

“You can’t do this,” she shouts at it.  “If you let her kill these people, you’re just as much a butcher as she is!  You hear me!  A butcher!  You can’t let her kill them!  We didn’t come all this way to this galaxy just to murder whole planets just because they survived!  Sheppard?  Sheppard?  Sheppard!”

Kenmore turns and starts looking around.

“You have to intervene!  You have to!  I don’t care what this alliance says!  You can’t just let a tyrant start massacring her own people!”  Kenmore keeps yelling as she walks over to the other side of the table and brings its chair over to the newly vacated front side of the table, careful to keep what was in one of her hands from getting damaged or accidentally activated prematurely.  Then she walks to the end of the table and turns its chair at an angle towards the other.

“You can’t just stand idly by and let it happen!  We’re here to help!!”

Then she sits down on the end chair, puts her legs up on the angled chair, leans back, and crosses her arms over her chest, finally bringing to light the radio she had been so carefully protecting in her hand.

“Fine!  I’ll just sit here and wait for you to come to your senses,” or figure out I snatched your radio off your shoulder, “while a psycho goes around killing people out there!  Don’t expect me to hold my breath!”…or actually wait around for you to come to your senses.

Ronon rolls his eyes, Pleease let her hold her breath, but his smile didn’t waver for a moment.