TITLE: WARLORD

FANDOM: Stargate: Atlantis

AUTHOR: rsharpe

BETAS, HONORED ADVISORS AND ARTIST: To Be Announced

DISCLAIMER: All of Stargate: Atlantis is the intellectual property of other people. This is a work of fiction; none of it is mine with the exception of a few OCs and the sections of the story that are completely AU. If you wish to use any original situations or any OCs from this story, please ask first.

SPOILERS: May possibly contain content from all five seasons. Events and episodes go AU at points. Some episodes are mentioned only in passing, some are ignored altogether. There are situations and/or dialogue that may come directly from episode(s).

CHARACTERS: Sheppard-Centric but with most of the usual suspects.

GEN/HET/SLASH: Gen

RATING: MA: Mature Adult for canon death, violence, torture, drug use, intense situations, nudity, swearing, politically incorrect language, etc.

ARCHIVE: Do not archive without my permission.

STATS: This is not a WIP, the story is complete. Chapters will be various lengths due to the nature of the narrative. Some shorter chapters may be combined for continuity. I do not have a word count yet as the later chapters are still be revised. Right now, I'm assuming 20 chapters.

SUMMARY/WARNINGS: A Warlord is a person with both military and civil power and control over an area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority. The term can also mean one who espouses the idea that war is necessary, and has the means and authority to engage in war. Under the feudal system the local military leader enjoyed great autonomy and a personal army, and still derived legitimacy from formal fealty to a central authority. A warlord can also mean a military commander exercising civil power in a region, whether in nominal allegiance to the national government or in defiance of it.

This story is about war. Most of the events will be from John Sheppard's perspective. It is not a pretty story, nor is it light reading. There are battles fought, large and small, both won and lost. Men and women meet violent and gruesome deaths. Some victims may be unarmed civilians, noncombatants or children. A lot of the characters will use language, slang and racial slurs that may make some people uncomfortable. These remarks and comments are not intended to shock, nor do they represent my personal opinions. People do not tend to be politically correct when fighting for their lives in a war zone. Some of these characters will not act or react as they did in canon. There are those who adopt a cavalier attitude toward death, their own and that of others. The characters in this story are facing what seems to be a hopeless situation as best they can, with courage and determination.

FEEDBACK: Positive feedback delivered in a respectful manner will be gratefully received.

WARLORD

Chapter 1

"Morality is contraband in war."

- Mahatma Gandhi

- 1869 - 1948

Captain Lyle "Dutch" Holland was dead. Their current little corner of hell had begun well over 24 hours ago when John had heard Dutch's hoarse voice, nearly unrecognizable from smoke and pain, calling into HQ over the designated ops channel for immediate exfil. Holland and Landers had been picking up two teams and Lyle's chopper had gone down under heavy fire. Since Landers was pushing his chopper's weight limit with several badly wounded men on board and had undetermined damage to his ship as well, he had no choice but to continue back to base. The sheer amount of gunfire and screams was almost overriding Holland's shouted words of desperation over the staticy com. He also confirmed that every soldier in his unit had taken fire and he was the only one still mobile.

It was taking way too long for the exfiltration orders to come down to their level from the higher-ups and John's disobedience that day would be armchair-quarterbacked for months by the lucky bastards who weren't there and hadn't had to make a decision in a matter of seconds. He'd landed his own bird just minutes before, finishing an uneventful border patrol. John heard the call on the com from the COs office as he was headed past his door for the briefing room down the hall. He was still suited up and he didn't even hesitate before turning on his heel and running back down the corridors with his commander's orders to stand down thundering after him. John knew he had scant minutes to act before the SFs came running out to stop him.

In spite of disobeying a direct order, taking up a chopper that hadn't been fully checked and refueled, shoving his shocked co-pilot out the door and onto the pavement to at least save his young ass, John knew there would be those who said it would all be for nothing before he even left the ground. That Holland and all his men were as good as dead. But John had to try. Dammit, he had to try again! God! This was exactly what had happened to Mitch and Dex in Khabour! So he slammed his helmet on and rushed the Hawk through the pre-flight. taking her up way too quickly, crooning nonsense to his lady all the way. They might try to physically stop him on the flight line, but they'd never fire on him. He was lifting off before the first wave of SFs had even made it half way across the burning hot pavement, the afternoon mirage making them appear as a shimmering ghost company coming to drag him back into hell. Instead, he was voluntarily flying into it. As an afterthought, he killed his com. He didn't need the distraction.

John knew that The Brass would declare that there had been too much risk for too little return, they'd say that was the reason the exfil orders weren't given. It was not the men's lives they were concerned with . . . it was money, pure and simple. Risk versus reward. Black figures on white paper, with a big, red minus sign denoting a negative return on the investment. If John went down hard, and there was a good chance he would from the abundance of firepower the enemy were using, that would be two multi-million dollar helicopters lost instead of one. At least it wouldn't be three. Landers' chopper had somehow come through the bombardment barely scored by the entrenched guns considering how bad it could have been. The wounded that Landers and his crew had picked up were already being sorted for transfer. Maybe some of them would even make it. John knew that there would be no orders for other choppers to follow him back in and cover the extraction. Hell, even if he made it back, with or without Holland or any of his crew, alive or dead, his ass was well and truly fucked.

Oh, Holland had been alive when John got there. Barely. The only one still painfully gasping for breath. But before he'd collapsed behind what cover he could find in the bullet-riddled chopper, Holland had been just mobile enough to destroy all the sensitive parts of his bird, just as John had done at his own crash site before loping over the uneven sand and rocks to locate any survivors. Of course John made it there by being shot down himself which was just all kinds of awkward when about all he had on him was his standard sidearm and a spare clip or two. A lucky shot had hit his rotor and brought John's copter spiraling down close to the first crash site. It had been the best controlled landing with damage that John had ever done. He was actually pretty proud of that.

The long range enemy fire had stopped for now and both John and Holland assumed the insurgents were shutting down their heavy artillery and camouflaging it in preparation to get down the mountain to the crashed helicopters and look for survivors or intel, hopefully both. The area between where the heavy fire had been coming from and the sand and brush where the helicopters were now was rocky, nearly vertical terrain. The Taliban would be already en route but they had a little time.

Things got really interesting as John attempted to patch Holland up with his little-used field trauma training. Since he'd grabbed the large first aid kit just before he took off running, he at least had plenty of supplies to work with. All sizes of field bandages, pads, clotting powder, sutures and even a plastic splint for Dutch's probably broken leg. What he didn't have was a trained medic, air and ground support and time.

Thank God the larger kits included a hard plastic case with pre-loaded morphine and antibiotic syringes. The splint would help a little when they moved, since they had no other choice. He'd taken a chance and injected his patient with half a dose of morphine to numb the pain a little before he started working on the worst of Lyle's injuries. John knew he didn't dare risk a full dose but he had to have Holland's cooperation. The other reason he skimped on the morphine was that Lyle's breathing seemed a little impaired. He didn't think a half dose would hurt him as he was pulling in air, even if it was a little labored.

Dutch still had enough spirit left in spite of the intense pain he was in to rag on John about crashing his own chopper. John thought about telling him another had been dispatched but Dutch would figure out that no one else was coming when they'd have to start moving instead of staying near the choppers.

John's own crash hadn't been quite as soft as he'd implied to Lyle. As far as his own injuries, John could feel what he hoped were just bruised ribs as every time he moved they thrummed in pain. His left shoulder felt more or less as it were being roasted over a slow flame and he wasn't nearly as coordinated as he'd like to be. His awkward movements might have something to do with the pounding headache that likely meant a slight concussion and the trickle of blood that he kept wiping away from his left eye. When the trickle turned into a steady stream, he paused working on Holland long enough to slap a small pad over the raised knot and bleeding scratch, taping it haphazardly just to get it stopped. John wished he could just lie down somewhere soft and safe and indulge in a little morphine as well.

Knowing that the clock was ticking, John muscled Dutch up and, with both of them grunting and cursing, half carried and half dragged him through as much sand and scrub as they could cover before dark. John knew they were leaving a trail from the wreckage that a child could follow and he also knew that Holland wasn't going to make it unless a miracle happened and a friendly picked them up. Soon. John had briefly considered taking shelter in an old, badly rusted Russian chopper, but their tracks in the sand led straight to it and there wasn't enough of it left to be a defensible position.

There would be no more helicopters coming, no more rescue attempts. Holland had gotten wise to that too and when John realized that they had been staggering across the broken landscape for hours and that the man couldn't take much more movement he gently lowered him to the sand. John tried his best to reassure Lyle by saying that he was really tired too and that they'd just take a short break. After about twenty minutes, Holland quietly succumbed to hypovolemic shock from too many bullet wounds John had had neither the time, skills or supplies to treat. Just before Dutch's eyes closed for good, he grabbed John's sleeve, nodded and gave him a wavering salute. John saw everything on Lyle's painfully grateful face that he just couldn't get enough breath to say. "Thanks for coming back for me, Sheppard. I didn't want to die alone. But it was a damm fool thing to do."

The oddest thing about the whole clusterfuck was that John didn't even like Holland. Basically Dutch's loud bullshit bragging about all his unlikely conquests and his bad jokes and clowning around got on John's nerves. He avoided him, his equally grating buddies and his antics, bypassing the cleared area at the front of the hanger that had been turned into a barracks where a few chairs and tables were set up as a makeshift dayroom. Enough packages got through that by this time they could be shared and there were decks of cards, board games, magazines and paperback books. Some of the packages even had goodies like cookies cushioned with popcorn and bags of M & M's. On his arrival, John had immediately claimed an empty bunk in a back corner as his, stowed his duffel and, by sprawling on it and keeping a book or magazine with him to appear occupied, he usually succeeded in being left alone. Hell, he would have read a Harlequin novel if it got him an hour or two of peace and quiet.

Here and now, with the cold night coming on fast and only Holland's corpse keeping him company, John kept thinking he should be regretting coming back. He'd really done it this time. This stunt was going to earn him much more than an hour standing at attention and being chewed out by the Old Man. He did regret all the hell this was going to cause both him and his commander providing, of course, he made it back to base. But he didn't regret doing it, not one damm bit of it. He didn't think he would regret it even if he was captured.

It was fucking cold in the desert at night. But it was also beautiful. John finally laid back carefully, mindful of his sore ribs and even sorer shoulder and used his good arm to cushion his head so he could look at the stars. They were different stars than the ones he'd memorized as a small boy, but he took what comfort he could from them. He had the feeling that comfort was going to be hard to come by soon.

TBC