Chapter 3
"The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and keep moving on."
- Ulysses S. Grant
- 1822 - 1885
Colonel Marshall Edwin Sumner was dead. Actually, he was as good as dead before John's bullet had penetrated his heart. The wraith who was draining him had almost finished, but John had seen the request in the rheumy, aged eyes. Colonel Sumner had wanted an honorable death. A clean death. A Marine's death. John had given it to him. In return, the responsibility of that death was his to carry. It was not the only death that John held himself accountable for. Not the only death that he sometimes dreamed about, waking up tangled in sweaty sheets, nightmares pulling him from half-remembered battles or ops carried out in remote forests, jungles, deserts and more recently in endless, winding corridors that seemed almost living and breathing beneath the sticky coating of the walls.
Colonel Sumner certainly hadn't liked John. It was fair to say that he fucking hated him. John's superior little smirks in Sumner's direction probably didn't help, but John had always reacted the same way to authority and especially when the representative of said authority was holier than thou and hated his guts for no reason. Well, no reason except that he wasn't a Marine. During the weeks they were stationed at the Mountain for the main prepatory stage of the mission, John knew that Sumner had tried every trick in the book and some that weren't to get him transferred from the SGC and returned to his old unit at McMurdo. But since he'd disobeyed General O'Neill's orders not to touch anything when he'd transported him to the scientific installation, and sat down in the Ancient control chair he'd discovered that he had inherited something called the ATA gene in spades and was apparently desperately needed in Atlantis. On a highly probable one-way trip. To another galaxy. So, a little disrespect to a Marine Colonel was really not even on the long list of Things John Sheppard Shouldn't Have Done.
Dr. Elizabeth Weir was not only in his corner, but so was General O'Neill. She had blocked Sumner's every move as though playing a chess game that she knew she'd win long before the pieces were even set on the board. John hadn't liked Sumner either. Sumner was a hard core Marine who thought that anyone in the Air Force was a pampered momma's boy who'd never make it in the real armed services. He was a hard-ass, by the book, old-timer. Sumner had taken one long, assessing look at John and decided that he was nothing but a pretty flyboy who was probably doing Weir. Since John was inserted into the mission at the last minute more or less for his unique abilities and wasn't really considered in the chain of command, John assumed that Sumner hadn't even bothered to read his uncensored file. Maybe he would have had a slightly different attitude, maybe not. When they were forced to be in meetings together, Sumner simply ignored him. He surmised that Sumner would have probably asked him to get him coffee and doughnuts if he thought he could get away with it, but with General O'Neill there he had to play nice. He saw the repressed laughter in General O'Neill's eyes and realized that the general knew exactly what Sumner was thinking. John mentally moved O'Neill up several notches in his estimation. Besides, he got to drink the good coffee in the conference room.
John sometimes wondered what Sumner would think of Sheppard being the de facto Military Commander after John had shot him. And after that inauspicious beginning, John had held Atlantis together literally with his own and every other Atlantis team member's blood, sweat and tears until Earth was able to reestablish contact. Or even what Sumner would think of the body count he almost single handedly racked up during the attempted Genii takeover of the City when he'd been forced back into that deep, dark place that he'd been taught how to find within himself. But Sumner hadn't been there to judge him, that wasn't how it had gone down and all John could hope for was the interrogation by the Keeper had not gotten any important information from Sumner and the Wraith were still unaware of Earth. And even more importantly, how to get there.
TBC