The Wraith were on their way to Earth.

Crap! As if the snake-heads weren't bad enough, now we had to deal with freakin' vampires! Colonel Sumner was a good man; I bet he hadn't gone down easily.

I watched as Major Sheppard finished his awkward eulogy - there was something about the younger man that reminded me of ... well, me. I'd known of him for a long time including that Afghanistan op where he'd saved three team-mates' lives, disobeying direct orders in the process.

I'd never realized how similar we were until Weir had set me straight. She'd been discussing adding Sheppard to the Atlantis team and I'd pointed out his proclivity for disobeying orders.

She looked at me and smirked. "General; I have read your own file," she said. "Please."

"Right."

Moving on!

Daniel strolled in at that point. "Oh, the Atlantis message," he said, shoving his glasses up his nose. He'd wanted to join that expedition, but I'd set a size thirteen firmly on that notion. Then he'd wanted to join the Prometheus crew for a rescue mission. I'd also tried to stop that, but had been over-ruled by Hammond.

The fact that Daniel - the civilian - had held out against a hijacker when the SG-3 Marines and a two-star General hadn't been able to had tickled me. It had taken Reynolds and his jarheads a while to live that one down.

"Come in," I grumbled. The guy wasn't military and wouldn't have dreamed of knocking on the door. Not that I was much for all that military etiquette, but sometimes it would've been nice. After all, I was 'The Man' now.

Weird. I'd spent most of my life sticking it to The Man and now ... I was The Man. Huh. Must've been bad karma or something.

"Seen Sam around?" Daniel continued, dropping into a seat next to me, as I put the recording on pause.

Oh, boy, had I ever! No, bad General! But this thing she had lately for sweet little tank tops was ... distracting! Meh; nice choice of words. Black stretchy tank tops that molded to every inch of her five nine frame, showing off slim arms, thin waist and rounded perky ...

"What's he saying?"

"Huh?" I jerked up from my Carter-induced musing to find that Daniel was playing the recording. I watched the scientist gabble and gesticulate excitedly about how Atlantis had risen from the sea. I'd already watched the recording once, so I wasn't surprised. "Oh. That's Czech," I told the linguist.

He frowned and I smirked. "Not one of your twenty-three languages, Danny-boy?" Hadn't called him that in a while, but it still pissed him off. Nice to know some things will always be the same.

"No," he said, pausing the recording. "You speak Czech?"

Time for one of those little bombs I liked to drop every now and then. I might not have multiple PhDs, but I wasn't as dumb as I liked to act. "And Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese and German," I said mildly. I decided to leave out the fact that I could also speak Asgard - I didn't want to kill the guy; he was my best friend, for cryin' out loud.

And if, ten years ago, someone had told me that my best friend would be a geeky linguist with allergies I would've laughed myself stupid. Life is so weird.

Daniel shook his head. "You're not as dumb as you make out, huh?" he said, sipping his coffee.

A knock on the door and my 2IC poked her blonde head in, big blue eyes shining. Nice. "Hey, Daniel. You're watching the Atlantis recording," she said. Hail, Mistress of the obvious. "Mind if I tag along?" she added, then drew herself up straight as she saw me. "Sir; hi," she said.

"Hey, Carter. Take a pew," I said.

She strolled into my office and sat down next to me, the warm skin of her bare upper arm sinking into my tee-shirt-clad one. Damn distracting tank top!

"Roll 'em, Daniel!" I ordered gruffly, then perked up when I saw Doctor Rodney McKay appear.

"Samantha Carter," the recording began. Carter flinched.

Did I mention I'd already seen this recording?

Heh; revenge is sweet.

And so are Carter's tank tops, my libido added.

D'oh!