Chapter 35

They arrived at the conference room to find two big carafes of coffee and condiments on the table waiting if they wanted, which O'Neill did and poured himself a coffee.

He looked over and asked, "Carter?" to which she replied, "Water's good for me, sir." O'Neill looked at Felix and asked, "Sergeant — coffee?"

Felix almost let slip a flip reply but managed to hold his answer to a simple, "Yes, sir — one and one — NATO standard."

O'Neill motioned that Felix could fix his own — which he did and then Colonel Sheppard arrived at the briefing room. "Ah, John — finally — got everything sorted out for now?"

Sheppard replied, "Yes sir — for now." He was just as curious to see how Felix would react to what was coming, as were O'Neill and Carter.

O'Neill said, "Why don't we sit and get comfortable for a bit, shall we?" and sat at the head of the table and looked down for a minute before saying, "You've done some quite remarkable things in your career, Sergeant. Have you ever thought about bucking for OCS?"

Felix replied with a polite but lightly forceful, "No thank you, sir — not a chance in hell."

O'Neill glanced over at Sheppard, who shrugged as if to say, 'I warned you'.

Carter leaned towards Felix and asked, "Why? You've got all the hallmarks of a good leader, Sergeant — your write-ups all show that you are a good leader." She looked at O'Neill and asked, "What was it his old CO said, sir?"

O'Neill continued to look down at the table as he stirred his coffee and answered, "He reminded me to tell you, Sergeant, about the time when you ended up running the platoon when you were his signaller and he was wounded, and also how you patched him up and made sure he was promptly medivaced out. He said if you weren't the signaller that day, a lot of your unit might not be around to see the day. After listening to what he had to say about you telling the gunships 'bring the rain hard' and seeing the after action reports myself, I'm inclined to agree with his assessment. He was quite grateful and forthright, your old CO."

Felix replied softly, "He's a good man, sir — how is he doing anyways?"

O'Neill replied, "Oh, he's doing fairly well, considering his injuries still bother him. He did say that you were one of the best at unconventional tactics he'd seen in quite some time — especially if you were pissed off."

The General paused for a moment to take a sip of his coffee and then continued, "He did tell me the rough highlights of your 2-year 'loan' to our side — quite interesting ... reading if you like fiction. So what really happened, Sergeant? What agency were you loaned to? All he would say was you came back a changed person and asked to be transferred back to CSAR soonest."

Felix sat back, took his beret off finally and wiped his brow, and took a swig of coffee before finally replying, "It boiled down to I didn't like the way those 'certain agencies' were manipulating and misusing us for their ends, so I sent them a message to that effect. They didn't like my message so they sent an assassin to kill me; I sent him back with a toe-tag and another message to fuck off or there would be consequences they wouldn't like. I pulled in a couple of favours owed and got them to forget about me — they understood after a bit what I had set in place for them. They wanted me to do assassinations of innocent people who I knew had done nothing wrong to anyone — and I was not going to do their bidding. After a couple of incidents they backed off and forgot I existed, which was what I wanted in the first place."

By now Felix was upset remembering that part of the past that he so desperately wanted to forget about and still had nightmares about. He continued; "I'm not going back to doing that — no way in hell. I've used certain elements of the past to survive out here — yeah, but it doesn't mean I like it because I don't, sir."

O'Neill nodded and took another sip of coffee and grimaced at the taste and then commented, "Sheppard, I don't know what your cooks do to the coffee but it still tastes like crap."

Sheppard was about to reply when Felix snorted and replied, "Try going 2 years without coffee, sir — this stuff tastes pretty good to me."

O'Neill nodded again and was about to continue when Felix asked him directly, "What's this all about, sir? You don't sit and talk to a Canadian Sergeant who you just gave medals to unless you want something. So what's up? What's with you and Colonel Carter coming here really about?"