Oh, Dalton.
We have been royally screwed over.
I can still hear your voice, playful as a puppy's, telling me about how Hawkins championed your cause to be reinstated into the Marines. We are too small-time for you, I think, although you can't have realized that yourself. You're too kind to really want to leave us behind, but you have a one-track thought process. It's always been your weakness. You always have had trouble seeing the big picture.
That is my specialty. Much good it does us now.
What would you do now, Marshal, if I told you that Commander Hawkins has us backed up to the wall with knives at our throats? What would you do if I told you now that, even as you are fighting the Skaarj down on Avalon, we are fleeing from him in the bright bursting darkness of space? Our commander is a liar and venom-tongued whore for the power that the Artifacts—our Artifacts—possess. What would you do if I told you that we—your motley crew and your battered and beautiful ship—are seconds away from death at his hands?
You'd lose concentration, that's what you'd do. You with your one-track mind would try to think of a way to save us, and that would surely get you killed in your own personal battle down there.
As usual, I have to save your ass. So that's what I'm going to do.
Well, not just me. Good-for-nothing Isaak is actually pulling his weight, and Ne'ban is flying the Atlantis like a champ. We all three of us know that this flight is the end, Dalton. The Atlantis is the swan and you'd better listen to the song we're singing, because it could mean the difference between your death and his.
When you do kill him, Dalton, do it with grace. Try to remember yourself and don't get too carried away. You are too kind to be lost to rage but you are in very real danger of being lost to loss.
I know what you will feel like after we are gone. You will feel like you have killed us. You will stay awake for weeks on end, caged inside of your own head, thinking, "If only, if only!".
But think of what you said to me about Taiko. We are the few. You, Marshal John Dalton, must save the many.
Know this. You have been in command of a cowardly, alcoholic mechanic, a Hex-Core parasite-Prince, and me. We would not have followed you into any of the events leading up until now if we didn't trust you.
You are our Marshal. You held our lives in your hand and saved each of us when you signed us aboard the Atlantis. You are the closest thing to God that we will ever know. We swore that wherever you went, we would follow. And we won't break that promise to you. Issak jokes that you'll find his memory in booze. I find that the heart is a sufficient container to keep a person alive.
Many times I watched you depart the Atlantis in the shuttle, going to places where I, nor Issak, nor Ne'ban could follow. It was frustrating, not being able to help you when you were in trouble.
Now we are going, John, and you must remain. My mind goes back to that puppy analogy.
The TCA led you around the galaxy like a dog on a leash, and I'm letting you free with one last order.
Good job, John.
Stay.