Chapter 6 – The Fire Spreads
Unlike a human, a Dungeon Keeper always knew what all his hands and all his other limbs were doing. Or where they were doing it. Or how many of them there were. Even what species they belonged to. Since a Dungeon's primary function was to serve as a staging ground for the conquest of an entire world, the heart kept track of such things as numbers and whereabouts of individuals, their current state of mind and body and of course their allegiance, to identify and categorize possible interlopers. In my first days after conquering Bahal, for the first time anyway, I had slowly become accustomed to having such interlopers – as of yet unaligned citizens, in other words – enter my dungeon on a regular basis. Claiming larger populations manually, while enjoyable for every individual, was rather time consuming and I simply didn't saw a need to establish a system for claiming all of them, when "all of them" wasn't actually saying all that much. Bahal had been home to thousands of Jaffa, quite a few of whom had died in the conquest, the rest ended up in my prisons – but only hundreds of humans. So I could just claim a few every day in between whatever tasks were at hand without sacrificing anything, really. A pleasant distraction, so to say. Though I had a feeling the humans in question didn't appreciate the act nearly half as much, seeing how it left most screaming, crying and writhing in pain for a few minutes. Tugging at one's soul tended to be rather uncomfortable.
I had adopted the same approach with the new influx of humans after my second conquest. The Jaffa contingent hadn't been anywhere near as large this time around, which was a good thing, since I didn't have enough skeletons left to simply bludgeon them into submission – I'd had to blow half of them up with subterranean powder charges instead. The amount of humans had been even larger, however, so between the new prisoners and the new minions-to-be, my dungeon was beginning to look rather healthy for the first time since I had arrived on this gods forsaken world. Well, not properly "forsaken", seeing how one had handed me a proper beating not so long ago, but at current they seemed to be busy elsewhere at least. After months of practice, the workshops were beginning to shape up, producing proper furniture, tools and parts for whatever contraption I desired at last. Weapons, not so much. I had a feeling that swords and spears would no longer be all that useful in the coming days and I couldn't replicate staffs as of yet. So why bother…
Naquadah still refused to yield to any and all attempts to smelt it or weld it or solder it, but both forging and sintering worked just fine. Still, any and all unsanctioned experimentation with it was banned under pain of death – slow and very painful death – because in the month since I had retaken the world I had managed to blow myself and my laboratory up with it not once but thrice, leaving bigger holes in the ground every time. That had yielded some interesting ideas for the future, particularly in the field of bombs, but was overall rather annoying at present. My current alchemy lab was situated way outside the confines of my dungeon, surrounded by reinforced bedrock and very close to the surface. Craters were much preferable to subterranean holes in the ground in my opinion. Still, it left me with a rather uneasy feeling whenever I thought about it. It had taken me just about a week of experimenting, mixing Naquadah with different elements, to discover a method of creating explosives several orders of magnitude more potent than anything I had ever employed. I figured, if I could just find a way to mix Naquadah, Iron and Potassium together adequately before the whole container blew itself to kingdom come, I would very well be able to remove mountains without too much trouble. To reproduce a similar effect with magic was possible, but inordinately difficult, and I was beginning to feel somewhat inadequate in this regard. If all my skills, my centuries of learning, my millennia of experience in the mystic arts could be one upped so easily, then I needed to change my ways somewhat radically to prevail here. Blowing up a mountain? Easy. Just mix three types of rock, stir and run. For crying out loud. How could that possibly be a thing?
So, my current projects were centred on three things: First and foremost, to replicate, mass produce an up scale my version of the staff cannon. I wanted, no, I needed bombards to secure the tunnels, bigger versions to shoot down Death Gliders, and giant ones to turn floating pyramids into so much smoking debris. Urden had spent the last month reading up on spell and rune work, at least when he hadn't been gorging himself on what remained of fugitive Jaffa on the surface, and was now working on the bombard, particularly on a way to aim the damn thing. So far, the odds of survival of the Imps commandeered to him for use as "moving targets" were still far too high, but he was making progress.
Second, to make use of the Chappa'ai in an organized and productive manner. So far, I had crushed three attempts of invasion by ring with minimal effort, with a net gain of undead troops along the way. I couldn't leave this planet by ring myself, at least not yet, but if the Goa'uld could make raids through them, so could I. It was just a matter of figuring out where to go without getting snuffed immediately, a matter, in fact, that would be greatly helped by my new prisoners. My torturers where no Dark Mistresses, and so mostly made a mess of things, but I wasn't expecting any converts, only information. Planet symbols, descriptions of places, sizes and positioning of garrisons, that kind of stuff. In general, Jaffa had proven remarkably resistant to interrogation, but since the chambers denied them most methods to kill themselves, they all broke eventually. You had to be bloody inventive to outwit the preserving enchantments, and every time someone did, I remade them. I would get my due. The particular brand of magic wielded by the Mistresses I could introduce once I had managed to introduce magic in the first place…
Which was proving to be a rather more significant problem than I had ever imagined possible. I had tested by now all adults under my dominion for magic affinity, and the results were both weirdly puzzling and highly depressing. Most of them would not be able to learn anything but the most basic of spellwork, e.g. they would still have problems lighting a candle by arcane means if they tried really, really hard. The few that surpassed them in potential would still have been refused as apprentices by any warlock worth his salt, which was beyond weird. In a population of thousands, there should have been latent warlocks. Granted, magic was not something you figured out on your own, as I had so often noticed in populations all over the universe before I had crushed them under my usually very well enchanted boots, but the immortal human soul was a mystic entity in itself. What manner of mystery had cut these people off from their native abilities, had deprived them of the opportunity to build a proper society I had no idea, but I was hell bent on correcting it.
Thus my third important project was my very own Warlock Cabal, which was only a name and a lot of numbers, notes and ideas so far. I had taken the people with the highest affinity and instituted a breeding program for starters. That would take quite some time to produce tangible results, I reckoned two or three generations at the very least unfortunately, so it was a fall back option only. I needed magical troops now, not in the future, so I was also pursuing other venues. Not so long ago I had explained to Malek the principle of Orcish upbringing, which was to say, stick them all into one big group and bring up the ones that survive, and that had born some unexpected fruit. I was currently designing a new room, a children's crèche, which was really an ingenious idea by him. Parents would bring their children there, where an overseer would see to it they didn't kill themselves during the day. They would be fed, maybe even taught something of worth, might as well use the time effectively. In other words, the little abominations would be kept safely secured in one place and it would free up their parents to work on more important things than changing diapers or instructing them on how to breathe or some such, thus increasing my manpower – and it would also provide me with a controlled environment to test their reaction to exposure of various magicks. One variant would include leaking Mana batteries, another would mix tiny charged crystals into their diet, and who knew what else I could come up with. Enchanted toys perhaps. They had the nascent ability, damnit, all thinking beings had, and if I had to rip it out of them to realize it, then so be it. Some casualties were expected, of course, but so far these humans seemed to be as consistent as the ones I knew in at least this part: They didn't breed quite as fast as Goblins, but give them enough food, comfortable beds and some time for themselves every now and again, and you would never run out.
I paused in my thoughts and, startled, turned my attention to Urden, who was registering on my mind as being under attack all of a sudden. There were no interlopers in his vicinity however, and he wasn't out hunting on the surface but in his lab working on the bombard, so the cause was probably something else. I scryed the lab to get a better understanding of what was happening and watched with a mixture of irritation and amusement as my first and so far only Vampire ran around in circles, screaming and trying frantically to put himself out, prompting memories of my own of possessing a burning Vampire, once upon a time. That had really, really hurt, I thought with my grin widening before taking in the room itself. The assembly on the workbench was a ruined, smouldering mess, so something had probably exploded, though I had no idea how he could possibly have managed that with what he should have been doing. A few seconds later Urden lost the battle against his own vampiric combustibility and crumbled to the ground in a shower of ashes. Now that was unfortunate. I barred the lab to Imps immediately. Death was a temporary condition for Vampires mostly, but if the Imp tasked with clean-up made his way in there I would have to sift my only magically potent minion out of the garbage bin, and I had better things to occupy my time with. I would go there later and scoop him up in an urn, then prepare for his resurrection. I had build a ritual chamber somewhere, hadn't I? Yes, there it was, close to the city in the upper layers. I had mostly abandoned those in anticipation of another attack from the skies, the majority of my dungeon was now once more growing around my Dungeon Heart – and said Heart had been relocated a kilometre deeper underground. Still, the Jaffa had been so nice as to clear out most of the tunnels and bigger rooms their bombardment had collapsed, just check the structure for signs of fatigue and the runes for cracks and Urden would be on his feet again in no time. Unless… Seven Hells, I wasn't used to doing everything myself anymore. Did I need virgin blood for this? Those were usually quite scarce in rural populations. Oh, wait, I had the children. No worries there, then…
Chulak, Palace of Moons
Apophis, Lord of Night, Brother of the Sun, Midnight Serpent, stood staring at he hologram before him and considered, semi seriously, to add another title to his quite impressive collection. "Solver of Riddles", maybe. Or why not "He who is buried under Mountains of Mysteries". No. The former would be better. The latter implied failure, and he could not have that. Not in general, of course, with him being an infallible god, but right about now, while he had actual problems to solve, having his Jaffa doubt him would not be…. Ideal.
As his eyes moved over the golden projection of light, said projection changed shape or focus every now and again, zooming in on certain areas, zooming out, panning left, right, up, down, assigning colours, rearranging symbols. It was a three dimensional picture of the Milky Way, although the Goa'uld only knew it as "the Realm". It might only be one among many galaxies in the universe, but they had never cared all that much. They would deal with that detail once they had all of it under control, preferably his control.
For now that state seemed both closer and more distant than ever before. With his brother's death all but confirmed now – he would not have stood for all that was going on in his territories nowadays, and by now, a great many heads would have rolled – the hyenas had come out to play. Corewards, there was Aker, who had once shared a border with Ra almost as wide as his own and was now launching incursions, taking whatever fringeworlds he could. The cur had always had ambitions. For now, Apophis was willing to indulge him. After all, the two of them also shared a rather large border. In one way, that gave Aker stability. With Ra gone, there was no pressure from that side anymore, so he could expand, wedged in no longer in between the gods of the Sun and the Moon on two sides and Amaterasu on a third. On the other side he knew exactly what would happen if he over extended, and so he had kept his border defences on high alert. Neither Apophis nor the slit eyed bitch would be able to take any territory from him without resorting to all out war. Amaterasu might just try anyway, because in order to get to the green pastures that were Ra's holdings she would have to go through Aker – which would put her on the spot herself, opening her up to attacks from Camulus or Morrigan, or maybe even Heru'ur, and so on and so on. The complete, silent disappearance of a single system Lord, and the entire Realm had been thrown into a state of minor, to medium, to not-quite-yet major wars. Not quite yet, but he could see it coming. Already Warlords were trying to carve up the realm that had once been his brother's, in addition to neighbouring system Lords taking small, but increasing bites out of it. This "Gheb", whoever he was, was only one of those upstarts, if the most successful, and it filled Apophis with righteous anger. If anyone were to inherit the Eye, surely it should be the Serpent! He would allow all these upstarts their time in the light, would allow Aker to bloody them in his attempt to rise and weaken in the process, would allow Amaterasu to wound him some more, would allow Amun, the failing steward, to grind himself to dust against this never ending tide of insurrections. Only then would he strike, bringing swift and unforgiving vengeance down on all of their heads. He didn't need to go for his Brother's carcass. He would feast on Aker's instead, and then move on.
Icon's flickered across his vision, informing him of an approaching Jaffa and of his identity before he could hear the first steps on the black marble floor. The Serpent smiled. Sometimes it was the little things that made or broke the act. Teal'c had long since stopped being surprised when his god addressed him by name without turning around, but he knew it had an effect regardless. So he zoomed out, ordered the core to display the galaxy in its entirety, welcome for the distraction. As the sound of heavy boots approached, then stopped entirely with a single metallic sound of a knee meeting stone, he wondered what his First Prime had for him.
"Speak, Teal'c!" He said, not bothering to turn around.
"My Lord! The troops have been deployed as per your command. The garrisons on Tel and Pelvarren have been bolstered and I have ordered additional training drills to ready the men for war."
"Very well, Teal'c." Now he turned around. Arms crossed behind his back, eyes glowing, focussing on the man before him. Most trusted servant he may be, but it didn't pay to skimp on the showmanship in moments such as these. "Now tell me of their disposition."
"Morale is high my Lord. The bloodless victories at the four fringeworlds last week are still fresh on their minds. With your prediction of their surrender coming true, the faith in you, my Lord, is as steadfast as ever in their hearts."
"Good. I have a place for the new recruits in my armies, once they have all declared their allegiance to me." That place would of course be at the forefront of battle. New converts were best used – and used up – as cannon fodder. Made the own troops grateful it wasn't them and was mostly seen as divine retribution for them siding with the wrong god in the first place. Also freed up their wives to be wed to his own Jaffa, enlarging his breeding potential. And the children would not grow up with stories told by their fathers of the good old times, but of their adoptive parents and their new god, grateful for their new place in life. Now that he thought about it, there really wasn't any downside to this tactic, was there?
"You have done well. Go now, Teal'c, be with your family. There will be war soon enough."
"It will be done, my Lord. For the glory of Apophis."
The aforementioned waved him off, turning back to the hologram that had been swirling slowly behind him the entire time. An impressive backdrop no doubt, seeing how Jaffa lit their houses with candles and torches, if at all. He smirked for a second before calling up the territorial detail map again. Under his gaze, four worlds, far apart and spread out against his border, that had once been of Ra now changed colour, becoming part of his realm. They weren't important. Not in the usual way. They were no use as staging grounds for further invasions, had no installations other than their pathetic slave villages. Oh, sure, "Amun-Ra" officially laid claim to them, but what did he care what the old fool did in his moments of clarity. In a week he probably would have forgotten he ever had troops there.
No, the real worth had been those troops, those Jaffa populations, because they had been a little out of the ordinary. They were larger than the typical garrison, strike forces assembled there to police the surrounding sectors. His brother had favoured this tactic over the large garrison worlds that Apophis preferred near the fringe. A hundred small ones rather than a dozen large ones. Now he was dead, so that was that, and his troops would instead serve as morale boosts for Apophis' own. All four had housed both Jaffa and their families and had been under the command of seasoned Jaffa Masters, an important detail. Give a Jaffa the option to die in the name of his god, however dead that one was reportedly, and he just might choose to go down in a blaze of glory. But with the knowledge that his wife, his children, his nephews maybe, would go down with him he might instead choose to bend the knee, as had been the case with these, their commanders ordering them to stand down when Apophis gave them the choice. Predicting anything publicly always carried a risk, but really, this one a child could have seen coming.
Again he was interrupted by a chime and a flashing symbol, this one belonging to his chief of staff. Was there not a moment's peace to be found today? A tangent thought ordered the door to the room closed, then he answered the call.
"What is it, Taweret?"
"My deepest apologies, my lord, to disturb you in your hour of contemplation. But we have an incoming call of our new Supreme Lord Presumptuous." Taweret cracked a wide smile. He had chosen a funny little man as his latest host, Apophis had no idea why, especially since he had always preferred beautiful females in the past. Still, he had to concede this smirk of his went very well with his sometimes rather dark humour. "Should I tell him you are indisposed or rather ignore the call all together?"
"No, you fool, you will relay it to me! I hope for your sake that you have been courteous with the usurper, too. It is not yet time for open hostilities and if he demands your head on a spike for this, rest assured, I might consider it!" Taweret still maintained his smirk, probably secure in the knowledge that his Lord really, really needed him. He bowed so deeply he almost vanished from the picture, then the display switched to that of a stylized ram head, which had one of its eyes superimposed by his brother's symbol. He was really going all out with this Amun-Ra thing, Apophis just had the time to think before the hologram switched again, this time to a female he didn't remember seeing before. Beautiful golden hair, emerald green eyes accentuated by just a tint of rouge, a sight befitting her rank, for she was truly a goddess among women. Thankfully, as was customary in these circumstances, the symbols of the Goa'uld calling were displayed at the bottom of the projection. Apophis quickly transformed his prepared smirk into a greeting smile, when the caller's ID did not after all match his expectation.
"Lord Apophis. I bring greetings from my Lord Amun-Ra. It is in his name that I call upon you now."
"And a sight for sore eyes you are. Though I am not familiar with your host, may I compliment you on your choice regardless, Lady Amaunet?"
"She is… acceptable. But your adulations are noted, Lord Apophis." He gave a slight bow, all adversity cleansed from his mind for the time being, washed away by the genuinely regal sight of the queen before him.
"Then how may I serve your Lord?"
"Truly? You could start with returning a certain number of border worlds, if memory serves. Though I suppose we should be grateful it was only those four, should we not? Others are not quite so… modest… in their misplaced ambitions."
"Sure enough they will fear the wrath of our Lord in time..." He could feel a smirk creeping up on the corners of his mouth. Going through this with a straight face was a trial worthy of a god.
"I am surprised your sarcasm hasn't melted your transceiver yet, Lord Apophis. Certainly there is enough acid for it in your actions, if not your words."
"And is that surprising? I have acknowledged my Brother's superiority, if grudgingly, for the last ten millennia. Your husband has not quite the same track record, I am afraid."
"My husband ruled the Ogdoad long before you or your brother were even born!"
"Also long before you became his queen, if memory serves… regardless, both events are so far in the past, why, I doubt the fabled Tau'ri would remember either of them."
"It matters little what a few savages on a backwater myth-world think. And regardless of what you think, Lord Apophis, my husband still commands the largest force of Ha'tak the galaxy has ever seen." Not quite true, but close enough, Apophis had to admit. It said more about Ra than it said about Amun, however. His brother had ruled over the System Lords with an iron fist – because it couldn't be done any other way – mostly because of his vast fleets. Amun had managed to lose quite a bit of those by now, mostly through desertion, but what remained was still beyond formidable, enough raw fire power to pound any single System lord into dust with one half and still defend his shrinking territory with the other against whoever came calling. He didn't have the infrastructure to support them all, not anymore, with systems seceding left and right, but Ha'taks were hardy vessels. If the ones he had were all fully fuelled and stocked, it would take quite a while before the drain became unbearable. And unfortunately, there was no reason to assume otherwise. As things stood, he and all of Amun's other neighbours were lucky that Amun had his hands full and his legions occupied stitching together his empire that was coming apart at the seams despite his best efforts.
"Is this why you are calling, then? To warn me of your master's intent on making war on me? Why, I am most grateful, my Lady. I had no idea you thought so highly of me…" That actually brought a smile to her face. Well, the shadow of one.
"That remains to be seen. For now, my Lord Husband merely wishes me to impress on you that your absence in the coming summit would be… noted."
"Amun-Ra is calling a summit of the System Lords?" Apophis had to fight down that smirk again, this time with more urgency. Officially you had to be appointed Supreme System Lord – by the council – to call a council. But if Amun showed up with the head of a former System Lord on a spike – say, Apophis' – that might just give him the inertia he needed to regain control over this mess. So he grit his teeth, bowed from the hip and acknowledged the data transfer when Amaunet started it. Time, date, place, nothing unusual here. Amun wanted a meeting, let him have a meeting. And let someone else take the fall.
Bahal Dungeon, living quarters
Teela loved her daughters dearly, she really did. In fact she had never been this happy before. Despite her work in the cantina, despite her helping her husband with some preliminary work whenever he brought some home with him, despite the housekeeping and everything else – she had never spend this much time with her babies and she was just ecstatic about it. She could go on walks with them, could watch them play with their friends – they had friends now, friends that didn't look like they would keel over from starvation any minute – and not have to worry that a Jaffa would stomp by in all his pomp and backhand them just because they were in his way.
Teela loved having her girls along, Halima on the left hand, Sekani on the right, bouncing on her arms with every step. It was so, so very peaceful. And so very, very exhausting!
When they reached their home, the girls shot off like wild bunnies, Sekani grabbed the wooden doll with the glowing eyes she had grown so fond of and Halima latched on to her stuffed animal, a fluffy creature of surely unholy origin, settled down in a corner of the main room and just giggled, leaving Teela to collapse into the big armchair they had spent the last few months of wages on. And boy, had that been worth it…Never would she have thought that having two kids could be harder than scavenging for everyday survival under the Jaffa.
"Sekani, take your sister and play in your room, will you, sweetie? Mommy needs some rest.." "Moooom..." The girl pouted, but eventually relented. Teela tried to restrict the heavy hand to a bare minimum, but a hard life had taught the girls to obey her mother anyway. Teela sighed when silence descended on the room and after a few seconds, she felt as if wrapped in happiness. Sure, the work was hard, work hours were long, but the pay was good and for the first time in what seemed like forever, she had spend months – months – without someone she knew or had talked to dying, be it a friend buried in the mines, or a distant relative crippled in the refineries or some associates child succumbing to illness or starvation. She missed the sun somewhat, but other than that, despite Malek's constant nagging, this was as close to heaven as she could imagine. She sniffed her robe tentatively and grinned again. When was the last time she had worried about having to shower again? Oh yes, never. Teela giggled and wiggled deeper into the comfy chair when the picture Malek had nailed to the wall above his desk caught her eye again. A series of pictures, really, depicted next to one another on one large rectangular piece of not-parchment-but-some-other-stuff. Thinner, white and it almost didn't smell, but she couldn't remember what he had called it. The biggest showed an oval depression in the ground, with concentric rings surrounding it on ever higher levels. The others, way smaller, the lot of them, showed cross sections of what Malek had explained where different parts of the thing, but she couldn't see them anywhere on the big picture. Teela only noticed that she was standing in front of it when she heard the door opening and closing, and felt a pair of arms hugging her from behind, leaning heavily on her. She pinched her husband in the back of his hand to snap him out of it. She really couldn't deal with a depressed scribe right now. No really, she physically couldn't, they would collapse on the desk on top of each other…
"I've never seen those hieroglyphics before. What do they say?" She asked him instead to take his mind off of things. He rubbed his hand and kissed her on the cheek before answering.
"They are not hieroglyphics. They are called letters. The Keeper taught them to us." She felt him stiffen like he did every time when his boss was mentioned in his presence. "Every symbol on its own is meaningless, but read them in a group and they spell a word. And you read them just by calling them by their names too. Here." Malek pointed to the first. "This is an 'A', this is 'R', 'E' ,'N' and 'A' again. It is really handy. Words are longer and look much less beautiful but you don't need to keep a thousand symbols in mind to be able to write, there are just thirty of these. The Keeper wants us scribes to translate the symbols into letters before the first school opens." "Is that what you are working on now? Then what is this?" she gestured to the picture. "And what does he need it for anyway?"
"I really do not want to know…"
"Husband, you say that every. Time. This looks like a stage. Biggest I've ever seen, okay, but what unspeakable evil could possibly come from this, hm?" She could all but feel him twitch beside her and sighed again. Teela decided to switch topics. "Why do you have a painting of it anyway if you hate it so much?"
"Because you can't really see on this how huge it will be when it's done. He had Memphis, Hebenu and Itawi drawing sketches like this one the entire week before he absconded with more paper than I could carry." Paper, that was it. Something about mushed plants…
"He is going to build this thing underground, he has already started digging. Haven't you seen the green clouds?"
"Of course I have, but when are there no green clouds?" She turned around and hugged her husband back. He was getting spirited again, good. "You know, for all the stories you tell me about him, I think he just really likes to dig..." Teela watched in awe as a smile fought against darker memories all across the battlefield that was her husbands face and won, if barely. "And you know, his little Imps? I realize they hacked the Jaffa to pieces, but they really seem so harmless… One of them was outside the other day. He carved that relief into the walls, next to the door."
"I had wondered when they would make their way here. There are so many of them, I am surprised it took so long. But please, tell the girls to stay away from them. I saw Memphis' boy riding one yesterday and last week a bunch of kids I haven't seen before pushed one over when it was on its way to the vaults, just to see the pellets roll all over the ground. Imps don't seem like much, but they hold a grudge. And unlike us, the kids are not protected from them."
"What do you mean?" He touched her temples slightly and she winced. Sometimes she thought the mark the Keeper had impressed there had never really healed.
"The symbol marks us as off limits. The Imps will not harm us, because we are valuable to him, they will even protect us, die for us if need be. It's the one regret I have about convincing him to let the children stay without taking them into his service." Teela was worried about that for a moment but then remembered something.
"Well, they haven't killed anyone yet, so maybe you shouldn't worry so much. And I saw those kids, I think. Rather I saw them running away from a cackling Imp, reeking of rotten eggs. If that's all they'll do, then I think we'll be fine." Malek shuddered regardless, no doubt imagining a prank war emerging between the now well fed and mostly bored children of Bahal and the veritable army of occasionally equally bored Imps that populated the dungeon. What would they do when they ran out of walls to carve stuff into?
"Say, the market has grown bigger and bigger this last month. I know we bought the chair from the workshop, but the more I think about it, the more I believe we could have used our money better if we had just waited a bit. They are already selling almost everything there..."
"Don't I know it. Everyone who wants to open a stall comes to me first and asks whether or not it's okay, or if the Keeper will come and eat them if they do..."
Teela giggled. "And? Has he? So far I mean.."
"Only if you actually ask him, I imagine. He hates the topic with a passion – money, I mean. I have no clue why, it was his idea after all, so why it would frustrate him like it does I don't know. But you really don't want to bring it up in his presence…" Then the smile vanished from his features again and his hug became tighter.
"The first raid battalion left the planet today. They went through the ring just before I turned in for the night." For a moment they just stood in front of the silly picture on the wall, safe in each others arms. It was something that Malek had first mentioned four weeks ago, that the Keeper would sent out warriors to attack other worlds. Worlds that were very much like Bahal had been. Where there lived people very much like the two of them.
"What are they going to… I mean..."
"Not much for today. Just go there, take a look around, maybe ambush some Jaffa. Their orders are to make camp and attack in the early morning."
"Shouldn't they look around first? I mean, how does he even know where to go? What if they run smack into a garrison and get all killed?"
"You don't want to know, love." Teela pinched him again for that. "Ow! Okay, so you do… I apologize. But you won't like it, I can promise you that at least. Do you remember Desouk?"
"Isn't that the guy with the funny nose? The Uncle of Memphis…. Sister, was it?"
"Hook-nose, yes. Though just be thankful I only got my nose broken once. Your face tends to suffer a bit when it happens to you 15 times..."
"What about him?"
"You wouldn't recognize him anymore. He… works… in the torture chambers now." and, after a few moments of silence: "Told you you wouldn't want to know. The Keeper turns most of his Jaffa prisoners, but the highest ranks get dropped of with Desouk and… others… I have been collecting the reports after he retook the surface. I have never seen a man this twitchy… Every time he looked at me, I don't know if he wanted to run and hide or grab one of those things he calls tools to shank me with when I turned around."
"So that's how..."
"How he knows where to go, yes. And they don't need to scout all that much, the Keeper does it from here. He stood in front of the ring for a good ten minutes and kept it open with his stares. I swear, Teela, he can see through the Chappa'ai… and he can talk to them, too, like he sometimes talks to me." Oh yes, she remembered that. Teela shuddered and hugged her husband again, in need of comfort herself now. She had stood next to him when a message had come drumming through his skull that had echoed in her own. Malek had only stumbled, used to it already, but Teela had all but gone to her knees in tears. It was one of those moments when she could understand why the rings around her husband's eyes kept getting darker. When she got a glance just how heavy the burden was he was carrying for her and the girls.
"Every single one of them has family, Teela. Every one. A wife, at least two kids. Most have younger brothers or sisters, too."
"What? Oh come on, how would you even know this?"
"I cannot not know this. I work in the library all day. It helps you see patterns, but it also forces them on you. So when I thought about them, it was all just… there. Obvious, impossible to ignore."
"So what if they do? Do you think it is so they fight harder? Because they have something to come back to?"
"To come back for, more likely..." She looked at him imploringly. She had a feeling she wasn't going to like this after all. But a wife had a duty, even if the husband was the one to do the heavy lifting.
"Teela, if I really wanted to get away – yes, I know, woman, why would I, humour me – just if. I told you about Desouk. I could not bear leaving you and the girls behind. Not with what I know. Not after what the war dogs did to those chickens – and the chicks." Teela was confused by the sudden change in topic.
"Dogs..?"
"He has collected all the dogs he could find, that's why there are none around anymore, had nothing to do with the menu change in the cantina. He is paying bounties for anyone who can bring him some, I think some of the hunters are exclusively looking for more in the woods. But the ones I have seen are not dogs anymore. He… changed them somehow. For use in combat he says. To help the troops. Eventually. But for now, they are just absolutely repulsive. One had two heads…" He trailed off for a few moments then shook his head and refocussed.
"Still, he said he wanted them to know. That they wouldn't be fighting alone for much longer. So he showed them, showed the entire battalion how they fed. I have no doubt they will all come back, Teela, every single one of them, and if they have to crawl through the ring." Malek stood up, kissed her on the cheek and made for the door.
"Where are you going?"
"To the tavern. I need some courage for this conversation."
"What conversation?"
"I need to talk to the girls. I do not want them to pet a dog ever again..."
End of Chapter
It has to be said...
Taweret – Both considered a demon in service to Apep (read: Apophis) and a patron of maternity and childbirth, however that works. Does not appear in Stargate canon.
Chulak –To my knowledge it is nowhere explicitly stated that Chulak is Apophis' throne world, in fact in "Children of the Gods" Teal'c says that the Goa'uld "return home" after a ceremony of choosing. So maybe Chulak is just another Jaffa garrison?
Sintering – industrial process which – basically – turns powder into a solid, if somewhat fragile bigger object without the necessity to smelt it. Producing any form of ceramics involves sintering as an intermediate step.
Goa'uld Domain – I have a certain idea of how the Goa'uld Empire could work, which will be explained in detail, either in this story or in another Stargate-fic. Suffice to say for now, the idea goes that in every System Lord's empire there are a few core worlds or throne worlds (See Star Wars' Coruscant, or in-Universe, see Delmak, Sokar's home world, which is THE ONLY throne world ever shown in Stargate), supplying the majority of the tech, then there are a handful intermediates, supplying the Jaffa and serving as a sink for the growing Goa'uld population, which are less developed than the former but more than the third type:
The Fringeworlds – very small mining settlements which sometimes only develop the area around the gate. A small population that basically picks up the near surface deposits of Naquadah or Iron or whatever else there is of worth, and when those are exhausted, both Stargate and population get moved by a few hundred kilometres. Those would surround every empire in a huge cloud and make up the majority of worlds visited by the SG teams. Believe it or not, those would actually be able to supply an industrial star spanning empire with the resources it needs. As long as you have enough of them, say a few hundred, even medieval colonies can have an amazing mineral output. Also serves as fridge brilliance: Why haven't we seen any more Goa'uld home worlds? The SGC knows about a few (See Ep4x15 for example), surely enough. But the Air Force also knows it would be suicide to go there. So they don't...
Goa'uld Senility – It is mentioned how Lord Yu is the oldest living Goa'uld left and is getting senile. This does not mean, however that an older Goa'uld has to be senile by default. Humans, as we all know, react very different to old age if you compare individuals.
The Role of the First Prime – Maybe one of the more puzzling facets of Stargate is the idea of one so paranoid as the Goa'uld giving any semblance of real power to a Jaffa. The role is never truly defined to any satisfaction. Is he a supreme military commander? A glorified bodyguard? Does he only command the ground forces? More often than not, Ha'taks are commanded by Goa'uld. Surely First Primes can't actually give orders to those? So I am going to assume that Teal'c's role in Apophis's service is somewhat of a second in command/wardog. Apophis lays down the strategy, Teal'c is responsible for the actual beat down. Apophis says: "I want that planet, here, take these space ships", Teal'c has to figure out how to make it happen with what he gets.
Goa'uld lifespan – In my opinion the show slugged itself solidly in the foot with this one. First the Tok'ra acknowledge in "Seth" that Setesh could still be alive on modern day earth without a Sarcophagus, then "Moebius" states the date of Ra's departure as 3000 B.C., finally the whole Egeria business in "Cure". The "ten thousand years" I proclaim as Ra's reign is a number I essentially pulled out of my ass.
Afterword
Yinko – The Keeper will not remain confined to a single world, rest assured, but just how he will achieve this, well, you will have to wait and see.
Tri2 – The way I see it, you are asking the wrong question entirely. The question for me as an author was not: "Can he?", but rather: "What if he does? And what happens when the ship takes off?"
TyrothDarkstorm – I have to admit, reading your per chapter review was strangely cathartic. Glad you are enjoying the story
In regards to Goa'uld sanity: I will display the Pharaohs as suitably megalomaniac. But I refuse to believe that someone who has managed to stay on top of the food chain for literally thousands of years – heck, even the minor players have managed to survive that long – can be criminally insane. Social Darwinism alone dictates that the guys that have survived are those with the least amount of crippling mental instability, while the total nut cases get offed (See Marduk for an in universe example). So yeah, my depiction of the Goa'uld might be unusual, but rest assured, they will not be sane, and there will be cackling.
The Keeper on the other hand is rather opportunistic. In the games, Magic and tech were used sided by side, I intend to keep it that way. Whatever works, works, be it magic, technology or Magitek. Also, in regards to the time line, I dropped one reference back in chapter 4. It has been a while since then. It won't be much longer before this develops into a fray and the Tau'ri feel the need to join in.