Ch.10: Conquer and Share 1

Janet was tired, aching and in a bad mood. This was a Bad Day. It'd all started about two minutes from her coming back down, with an unscheduled off-world activation that resulted in an infirmary full of SG-5, none of them cooperating. The base had gone to a lock-down, until they were sure it wasn't contagious. As it turned out, it was a plant toxin that was making them act like they were on cocaine, MDMA and LSD at the same time. The effects of the strange orange nettle should lose its effect in another hour, according to the toxicology results. Of course, the embarrassment of slapping the CMO's butt would last years – but the one caused by raucous singing currently recorded by a particularly vindictive nurse would last forever (Dave didn't like being called a 'prettygirl').

Next up was a crying Dr. Sawston, limping in half-carried by his assistant, who she didn't bother asking why her boss went cleaning up a box of smashed slides barefoot. Scientists.

And to top it all off, six of the Nassaryans in her care died in the base's hospital while she was dealing with it all. It made her feel guilty. Oh, she knew some of them would die, and that there was nothing she could do, but not being there made it worse. If you couldn't save them, least you could do is be there for their dying 'cause of it.

She caught two hours of sleep before being woken by a wrung-out nurse, who told her the Shifterkyn Liaison was arriving within the hour. She was to establish a baseline for tomorrow's SG-3's return to Foll with a Nemesis.

Not that she had an exact idea about how to do that. The 'medical file' she'd received two days ago contained ninety pages, but she'd realized ten lines in it wasn't really a medical file as such. It had lines like 'Hg\Ag shift tolerance limit' and 'relative reflex deviations' followed by numbers and letters that were little or no use to her. There wasn't even a blood type listed. The Nemesis Shrine did email her a service record from his Marine days, but other than an allergy to silver and shellfish there was nothing noteworthy there – not that it was relevant, since he didn't currently have any silver implanted. The Kyn medical journals were no help, since they didn't say anything much about treatment, focusing mainly on the differences. She ended up calling in a woman from botany that also had a PhD in zoology and a few years' practice as a vet.

So now she was going over the file the Kyn gave her, Dr. Harper yawning into her coffee to her left, trying to see if glaring would make the thing any more useful the 56th time 'round.

The door opened. Sally, one of her veteran nurses came in with a weird look on her face, and she saw why just a few seconds later as the Nemesis Liaison stepped in behind her.

She felt her eyes widen as she stood and looked him up and further up.

Her first impression was that of a Viking raider sans the battleaxe. He was six-foot-six, blond, blue-eyed, with what could be best described as a bruiser's face, complete with leather and piercings. They sent this …thug for a diplomatic mission?

"Good afternoon ma'am, I'm Eric Marshall Wernsen of Chicago South Kynhouse, I was told you had to establish a baseline?" He said politely and gave her a dimpled smile. On the other hand, Teal'c does fine, why not him…?

"Janet Fraiser." She shook his hand. He had a good grip, but the skin was soft - too soft. She noticed nails had dropped from three of his fingers, likely from a recent contusion; in fact his right hand was much paler than his left. New skin?

"Nice to meetchya ma'am, General Hammond told me I had to check in with you if I wanted off this planet?"

He shook the now wide awake Dr. Harper's hand next.

"Yes, you do, so if you will just come along this way…"

Thankfully, Wernsen (call-me-Marsh), wasn't offended at having a doctor and a vet. He was polite and surprisingly easy to talk to. She found out he was Rookie Generation Nemesis, whatever that meant, 'only' 65 years old, and had been a Nemesis for the last decade, being an Apprentice for twice as long before. The treatment of a critically injured Kyn, to quote the man, was: '…remove foreign bodies, align the bones, then get them hydrated and shovel as many calories in them as possible. Lard-shake works best.'

He endured their poking and prodding with every sign of good will, answered their questions and asked some of his own.

Also, it brightened her day considerably to see a fifty-something zoologist blush like a school girl when asked ever-so-politely if she would be so kind to check his rectrices right before he shifted. Apparently even tail feathers got split ends. He was bigger than a regular raven, and she noted three of his claws were a lot shorter, too. So the injuries transferred to anima form? But why not to fighter-form, too? It made no sense…

The bone structure of that form would prove interesting to set if he broke anything, since the bones of his hands were an odd composition of bones designed for flight, and human finger bones. The bones that were thicker in a wing were all normally dense, so three of his fingers were fine, but the bones of the others were fragilely thin. His thumbs were opposable, but length of knuckles and the spacing of the fingers was different. Not to mention there were actual feathers covering him. And he could talk and enunciate perfectly with a beak. And the differences in body-mass… Kyn anatomy made her head hurt.

He was about to walk out with a promise to go and catch at least 12 hours of sleep, when Sam came by, asking how the Nassariyans were.

It was weird, Sam asking her instead of going and finding out herself, but she answered her, and made a mental note to have a talk with Daniel about Sam's emotional state. It wasn't until Sam left that she noticed - Wernsen's eyes were closed; he stood completely still, breathing deep, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Like a dog catching a scent.

"Dr. Fraiser, did Capitan Carter just come through the Stargate?" Dear god, he smelled that Sam went through the Stargate?

She must have blurted that out loud, because he tilted his head, puzzled, drawing deep, measured breaths.

"Maybe, it's like… like there's something not her, like it was added."

"What do you mean, added?" He opened his eyes and looked at her.

"Well, you know how a diet results in a different body odor? Garlic or soya sauce can be smelled in bodily fluids. It doesn't change what we call the base-scent..." He rubbed the back of his neck, obviously at a loss how to explain.

"So you can basically smell what a person ate last?" He shook his head.

"Nah, just the strong smelling things if they eat them often, then there's the whole cosmetics and soaps and stuff… depends on one's focus. You smell everything for the first few weeks to the point of nausea, and then eventually you just stop, get accustomed, like people living in the cities don't smell the smog. We smell newly encountered smells and the base-scents - that's people - everything else takes training and talent. For instance, when I first came in, the antiseptic momentarily covered everything, but then it became background and I could start noticing other stuff, like coffee, soap, your base-scents … er," he gave her an apologetic smile. "Sorry, I just realized how weird that probably sounded to you."

"No, go on. Could it be the naquadah?"

She was fascinated by the whole base-scent idea. She'd read a lot about it, mostly because of a friend of hers that theorized it had something to do with them somehow smelling DNA. And really, how did Kyn have such sharp sense of smell when they were in their human form? The human nose shouldn't be capable of sensing it all, or maybe it did and the Kyn just consciously processed the data?

"That's a metal, right? No… It's like someone took her base-scent, then poured bleach over it. Her base-scent is there, but it's overridden somehow, with something way other." He shrugged.

"It's like smelling soya sauce 'cept she didn't eat Chinese, but something funky. It's just weird. I mean, why does a trip through a wormhole leave a scent?"

He left after that, but his words left a feeling of foreboding. The bad kind. Maybe she should give Sam another, more detailed check-up? But first she had to go and see Cassie…

He let the general's voice wash over him as he brooded. Goddamn snakes. Seeing Carter depressed was an experience he really could do without.

It rattled him, more than he was willing to admit. Sure he saw her hurt before, but this was worse. Her will was something he'd always admired, and now… She'd looked so broken, lying there in the infirmary, looking like she just wanted to roll over and die. He knew there'd been no real way for him to prevent it, but that didn't make the guilt go away. And how the hell did no one notice? How did he not notice something was off?

He'd known Sam had a lot of shocking news dumped on her recently, and sure, seeing that kind of slaughter, having a man die in her arms would make anyone close up - or dig themselves into their work, like Sam usually did. But she only acted all formal when she was angry.

Okay, so she had reason to be cold and formal towards him, but not to others.

He should have seen it sooner. Suppose it was an actual Goa'uld? What if Sam'd ended up like Kowalski?

The snake that claimed (and admittedly, later proved) it had a conscience – Jolinar – completely freaked out over Kyn. It actually hyperventilated. A demonstration and an explanation later, they were actually making progress – it told them it would be willing to give them a way to contact the Tok'ra so that another host could be sent through. And of course then the assassin from the System Lords went and killed it.

He was currently listening to a report about the thing with X74-we-got-snakey-weaponthings-to-trade. SG-3'd been gloating way too much over that one in his opinion. According to the report it seemed the natives liked the Kyn Liaison enough to agree to trade with them after all. According to the reports, all it took for a guy to get a Death Glider these days was to turn into a bird. More importantly, they told them about the 'forest-guarders', which was probably what they called the Kyn. Their boss man said they came every once in a while to trade furs and raw materials. And that they sometimes slaughtered the ones that came through the Stone Lake. He handed over the Goa'uld junk – 'cuz that's what it was, none of it worked - and tried to gift each of them a pair of daughters, and when that was politely declined, a whole herd of horses. It was a hell of a fight to get the nags on the elevator... Meanwhile the Nemesis guy that sweet-talked them into it was called back to work about two seconds after coming back to the planet. Too bad, he liked the guy. He cheered Sam up some.

The General warned him the Kyn would likely try to find a way to get a colony on another planet.

And speaking of, he still wasn't too happy about Zee working at SGC. He wasn't all that sure working here was safer than catching Ferals. Okay, so she wouldn't start for another year and a half, but eventually she would. And then what'll he do? Unless they managed to wipe out the System Lords by then she would be in as much danger as he. And the rest of the world, but that wasn't the point.

Sometimes he really wished his redheaded almost-girlfriend led more boring life. As it was, they still hadn't had that date he managed to get her to agree to. The whole Sam getting snaked thing sorta got in the way.

The General's voice interrupted his thoughts.

"… not next year. Colonel, do you have anything to add?"

"Huh? Oh… er," he mentally rewound the last sixty seconds of the conversation, "…no, who was the other Kyn Liaison again?"

Hammond gave him a Look, but he answered all the same.

"Isaac Petitrenard. He may be Canadian-born, but he was here to see the Civil War, so he's American enough for the folks at Washington. He was a field medic in Vietnam, so he should have at least some idea on how to use a gun."

Field Medic, huh? It would come in handy, but a medic wasn't a soldier, Nemesis or not.

"You're still putting him through the same training the civilians get, right?"

The Look he got for that clued him into adding:

"Knifed?"

"As I already said, Colonel, yes."

Petitrenard. 'Petit' was French for 'small', Canadian, Civil War…

"He of Native American descent?"

Hammond didn't quite roll his eyes, but he did turn his gaze heavenward. Nothing annoyed his CO quite as much as his subordinates sleeping through the boring bits, mainly because he couldn't do the same.

"Yes, Dr. Jackson explained his Indian name was Little Fox just a few minutes ago." Oh, right, he'd tuned out after the first 'fascinating'.

"Anything else? Right. Dismissed."

He stood up to leave, but the General stopped him.

"Not you, Colonel."

Well, that didn't sound good. Was he in some kind of trouble?

"Sir?"

"If you recall I told you that Nemesis Wernsen made a remark to Dr. Fraiser about Capitan Carter. I told the Dr. to see if any of the Kyn that works here can detect anything. Turns out they can. All of the Kyn we employ here agreed they would use that ability to check the in-coming travelers. But regulation dictates they have some training to do that."

"Sir?" He could see where this was going.

"It would be nice if they at least knew when to duck, Colonel."

"Sir."

He carefully stared straight ahead. Great, just great. Babysitting a bunch of scientists... all of which could break him in half. Maybe he could get Teal'c to do it…

"You will assign them with an instructor and make sure they learn enough not to get killed."

"Sir?" Not that he wasn't grateful, but the only reason the General wouldn't be telling him to do this himself would be if he needed him for something else.

"The Kyn want to send an expedition off the planet and establish a colony, Colonel." Yeah. Didn't they have that discussion already? Why was he bringing that up again?

"That's bad?" He hedged. The man narrowed his eyes in annoyance.

"It is. We're a base, not a bus stop. On the other hand we would end up with another place to go if things turn hot."

Free-of-charge evacuation site in case of invasion, got'cha. And since they were on a bit of a hurry with this whole 'get a way to defend ourselves from the snakeheads' thing, it was worth bringing a bunch of civilians in it, if it more than halved the time they would need to do it on their own.

"Sir, why are you telling me this?" Again.

Hammond smiled. Jack fought the urge to run for the door.

"Well, you have experience with kyn."

They wanted to talk, alright. Ambercue did the chipmunk-on-crack impersonation that somehow made the previously spitting mad Denver Alpha calm down and agree to providing cover for the Nemesis working on base. And probably a midway stop for the Kyn they wanted to get off the planet in a hurry for some reason.

Afterwards there was a bunch of double meaning talk that boiled down to 'we want, you give'. That is, they wanted a Kyn colony, and they wanted to have it on another planet. Talk about ambition.

Clearing one of the planets on the Goa'ulds no-no list of Ferals would take the man-power and resources they didn't have, not while they had bigger fish (well, snakes) to fry, which he politely pointed out. He expected it to wipe the smile off Ambercue's face. It did just the opposite.

He beamed, like he'd been waiting for someone to say just that. He could feel Hammond's glare burning holes into his head. What?

"Oh, but it's been suggested we offer our help with establishing your evacuation site. In fact, I'm fairly confident you also received orders to evacuate the entire Denver Kynhouse in case of another potential alien invasion by President Ryan."

They did? He glanced at the General, who gave a tight nod, still glaring at him. Oh. He'd lead them straight to it. Well, sorry, but how was he supposed to know?

"I thought it was three Liaisons? How can you expect three people to secure an entire planet?" And there was no way in hell he'd let Zee go…

Colorado Alpha shrugged. For some reason the guy hated him, going by the stony glare he kept giving him. His name was Alex Lee, and he was a short black man that was probably some sort of a were-snake judging by the amount of blinking.

"Two Ferals seek each other out and usually fight to death, or sometimes form a pack. And packs do the same with other packs, and there's internal fighting there, so in time a pack kills itself off to about five. Worst case we got one stable Feral pack of about five, best case one Feral or a massive pack that is fighting amongst themselves. Technically they could do it on their own, but the Shrine will send back-up if it is a pack. 'Sides, we don't have to go and clear the entire planet, just check on other continents for Stargates, since Ferals cannot swim."

Hammond cleared his throat.

"I think making plans so far into the future would be unwise."

Ambercue's smile didn't waver. How the hell did this guy get to be a diplomat? He should be a muppet or something.

"Oh, on the contrary. You have your orders, no?"

Okay, guess he was missing a few pieces here. Orders? They had to make another Alpha Site, so what?

Hammond glared.

"Ah fail to see how mah way of fulfilling those same orders is any of your business," he said.

Uh-oh, The Drawl was making an appearance. Gotta remember to keep his head down for a while.

Ambercue just kept smiling.

"But you do need to find a place for another evacuation site within two months. And the President wants a safe place for certain Kyn …immigrants, I'm sure something was mentioned in your last discussion with him. You get a self-sustaining evacuation site in record time; we get the ultimate safe-house. What's the downside?"

That cleared things. Kyn were mainly accepted, true, but in the more superstitious climates all it took was one idiot with a torch and soon enough there was a mob behind him. The number of immigrants tripled in the last few months, quadrupled in Europe. Hell, last night- no wait, last week on the news he saw a report on a family being lynched somewhere in Asia, and there were religious nuts calling them demons all over, even in the US. There were about five hundred thousand Kyn registered worldwide, less than a fifth of the total, the rest of them were still hiding. Sure, they were popular, but it was media-made popularity. All it would take was one bad news story and things could get really difficult for them. It looked like the Alphas were looking for options.

But while the inner tactician did know how beneficial the Kyn Colony plan would be, the inner Jack pointed out they were still being total dicks pushing it.

"…and we would make sure the people we sent were competent."

"I don't appreciate bein' wrangled." Hammond snarled. And now The Glare was there too. Make that a long, long while.

Ambercue huffed and suddenly the chipmunk-on-crack-muppet persona was gone, and he was just a bland-faced guy in a suit, looking at Hammond with calm eyes.

"No one does. But you will let yourself be, because you're more sensible than proud, and you know you need this as much as we do."

Hammond was stiff with anger, but gave a nod. Now wait a minute, he was going along with this?

"All due respect General," -and yikes, The Glare was now aimed at him- "Do you really think it's a good idea to let civilians go camping on an unexplored planet? With Ferals on it?"

The two Kyn at the table stared at him like he was crazy.

Ambercue cleared his throat.

"Well, if you would provide people who have experience with off world exploring, as an addition to our people, experienced in dealing with Feral packs…" The tone said: We're the professionals here, butt out.

He was all out of arguments, and he could only watch as Hammond relented to the idea of Joint-SGC-Kyn-Evacuation-Site. And somehow his sneaky CO got their Kyn Liaisons reassigned to SGC immediately, in time for the next trip to Foll.

Long as SG-1 came with. Damn.

MDMA – an abbreviation for methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known to the more delinquent (and dumb) partygoers as Ecstasy.

Myth: Kyn can smell a lie.

Fact: Some kyn, in right circumstances, can smell al lie.

Kyn have a sense of smell on par with a basset hound. But they can't tell everything about you, and not all of them know how to tell whether or not you are lying. They smell everything in the sense we see everything. You do see everything, but if you're not looking, thinking and focused, at something, it might as well be invisible. Ever searched all over for something right in front of your nose?

Same applies here. They smell more than us, but they process it the same. So unless the kyn in front of you is looking, they won't see the lie. Smell. Whatever. You tell her that dress doesn't make her look fat without fear.

I.L. Jones, Washington DC Cliff's Notes Weekly, Facts and Myths Column.

Not dead. But it was a close thing. Anywhoo, I'm not really sure where I was going with this now. Not anymore, anyway. I found what was meant to be the final chapter, but i never wrote whatever was to come in between. So, this will be finished someday, but not for a long while. Rewiew, would you? I need ideas, suggestions, anything.

(And I just realised, this is like a mary-sue. Okay, I'll have to make the girl a little more not-sue. A nice little nervous breakdown? A bitch move because of some left-over victorian standards? So many options...)