A/N: Thanks to all who continue to read and review!
The conquest of Sokar's territory was much more complicated and time-consuming than the quick sweep through Apophis' territory, unsurprisingly. Sokar had controlled much more territory than Apophis had by the end, and his territory was not fragmented either, with underlings squabbling for power. Even with Sokar killed in mid-Ea, his fanatically loyal underlings put up a concerted and devious defense of his lands, making the Furlings fight for every planet they captured.
From the first attacks on Delmak, Netu, Memphis, and the Necropolis in what would have been late April on earth, it took just over six (Furlings) weeks for the Furlings to be fully satisfied that they had captured all Goa'uld-controlled worlds within Sokar's territory and hunted down and captured any and all of his underlings. Though Sokar's 'empire' was not massive by Goa'uld standards, many of his strongholds were well-hidden with twists, turns, and secret chambers that all had to be cleared, lengthening the time it took to capture most worlds.
Finally, Sokar's empire fell, and the Furlings found themselves in control of the territory that had once belonged to both Sokar and Apophis. Heru'ur, the son of Ra and Hathor, was picked as the next target since he was seeking to take advantage of the chaos caused by the attacks of the Furlings and expand his territory. Daniel, however, was not present for almost the entire campaign, because just days into it, he got his first taste of Furling diseases.
11th of Xuxiq, 6545 A.S.
Uslisgas, Asteria
It was around the 7th hour when Daniel's alarm woke him from a fitful sleep, and he knew, from the moment his eyes opened and awareness of his body hit him, that he was sick. His guess from the previous night that he was coming down with something had, unfortunately, proved correct. It would, somehow, be the first time he had gotten sick in the almost year he had been with the Furlings. He would have been happy to make it two years … or more.
The heaviness in his chest. The bone-deep ache in his limbs. The pounding headache behind his eyes, like he had spent too many hours trying to decipher the worst handwriting in the most obscure Egyptian text imaginable. Something Demotic would do it. The inability for his body to decide if he were burning hot or freezing cold … although it was fall and a very pleasant temperature both inside and out.
Yep, I'm sick.
Daniel threw back the covers with a grimace, resisting the urge to pull them back over his head and curl up in a ball. A wave of dizziness hit him as soon as he was upright, and then a coughing fit spasmed through his lungs, making him do his dead-level best to cough up, at least, one lung.
Definitely sick.
It was the worst possible time for him to be sick. He and Sujanha were only supposed to be on Uslisgas for two days at most. The campaign against Heru'ur was kicking into gear, and there was work to be done. He didn't have time to be sick.
(It was like those sicknesses that struck right around finals.)
Sickness, however, had a mind of its own.
Don't tell me Asteria has its own version of the flu?!
Slowly, his head throbbing and spinning the more he moved, Daniel rose from bed and forced himself to dress for the day. Even if, in the end, he got his wish to crawl back into bed, pull the covers over his head, and sleep the day away until he felt better, he still needed to get up and do Sujanha the courtesy of telling her he was (A) out of commission and, therefore, (B) good for nothing at Headquarters.
Sujanha was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, mug in hand, gazing out the living room window into the garden, adorned with fall colors, when Daniel made it off the steps. He kept a steadying hand on the stair rail.
Dizziness, fever, cough, and headache.
World's worst case of the flu or something.
Came on all of a sudden, though.
She looked up and visibly frowned, eyes going wide and ears going back at his appearance and unsteady steps. She scanned him over from head to toe and then back up again and frowned harder. "You do not look well at all."
It was probably the understatement of the century.
"I don't feel well at all," Daniel said dryly as Sujanha retreated into the kitchen long enough to set her mug down and then returned.
"I was concerned last night, but I am not that surprised," she replied. "Mid to late fall is around the time the cold-weather illnesses start to circulate, and ships make for easy spread, especially with tired crews. What symptoms do you feel?"
Lucky me.
There was a list by now, and Daniel rattled them off. "Pounding headache, cough, sort of heaviness or tightness in my chest," and I don't have asthma, "fever—I can't decide if I'm hot or cold—and dizziness."
The laundry list.
Sujanha's eyes widened and then narrowed in quick succession. She motioned him forward. "Come here."
Daniel hesitated. "I don't want to give you whatever I've had." The last thing we need is for you to get sick. Considering her health was more fragile, he had no idea even how badly a seasonal illness could strike her.
The look he got in response was equal parts fond and chiding. "Come here," she repeated. "If my guess is correct as to what you have, I have probably had about every variation imaginable, considering before the last forty years, I used to get it more than once a year for the fifty years before that." Yikes! "And besides, my health may be fragile compared to others of the Getae, but I'm not that sickly. What is strong enough to make you ill is not necessarily strong enough to make even me sick."
And I'm guessing what would make you or, especially, your brother or Ragnar or Ruarc sick would put me even more down for the count?
Daniel did what he was told and came across the hallway until they were an arm's length apart. Sujanha reached out and gently pressed the pad of her left paw to his forehead, carefully keeping the claws out of the way. The pads of her paw were rough but blessedly cool, as for the moment he was back to feeling like a blazing furnace.
"You feel like a furnace," Sujanha said after only a moment, her choice of words eerily matching his own thoughts, drawing her paw away. "Come sit down before you fall down."
Daniel took a seat at the kitchen table and let Sujanha bring him a cup of tea and a slice of bread. He wasn't hungry, though he didn't feel sick, not in that way, but he knew he needed to keep up his strength. "Any chance I can just go to bed and sleep this off?" He asked.
"None," Sujanha said, shaking her head. She retook her mug and leaned against the counter a few feet away. "Unless I am much mistaken, you have what we call 'Fever's Touch,' and as badly as you feel now, you will feel worse."
Worse …
Oh, joy!
Daniel groaned. "Oh, joy." It was a slightly strange expression in English, somewhat stranger in Furling, but the sheer sarcasm of his words carried over fine.
That got him a sympathetic look. "From how quickly your symptoms have appeared, I fear you have a worse case than some, and you will be quite miserable for a time. Do not fear. You will be well in the end. Go pack yourself a bag, and I will take you to the Healer's Halls before I go to headquarters."
Tiredly and slowly, Daniel returned to his room and packed a bag with some spare clothes and his current notebook, fighting off a wave of dizziness as he worked. "Why do I have to go to the hospital … the healers?" Daniel asked, fumbling his words, once he returned downstairs.
"Aside from the fact that you have never had an Asterian disease before and that you already are quite sick?" Sujanha asked dryly, taking his bag from him and hooking it over her good shoulder, "It is not safe for you to remain here alone. With some, fevers can go high enough to cause dark visions, and some have coughing spells bad enough to break bones."
Hallucinations … wonderful.
Break a rib coughing … not an experience I've ever had. Can definitely do without that … ever.
"Oh," was all Daniel could say to that. He focused his attention on keeping his eyes open and himself steady on his feet. All he wanted to do at the moment was crawl back under the covers of his own bed and sleep for a week, assuming that he didn't feel too horrible to even sleep. That was sometimes an unfortunate fact of life: being too tired or too miserably sick to sleep.
I hate those days.
Sujanha input a set of coordinates on her gauntlets, different from the set for Headquarters, and seconds later the two were beamed away. The Healers' Halls—the Furling equivalent to a hospital—was a sprawling complex on the outskirts of the lower town, though there were smaller 'clinics' as well as beaming locations from which one could reach the main facility located within the city itself. Where exactly within those halls, Sujanha had beamed them, too, Daniel had no idea. He had never been to the Healers' Halls before and was feeling too tired and miserable to try to study the area too much.
Scholarly-brain had to take a backseat today.
Sujanha's arrival drew a lot of attention from the healers in the room they had beamed into, and Daniel was quickly handed over to the care of the healers. She bid him farewell, hoping that he would feel better soon, and then the two parted ways. Daniel looked back as he was wheeled away on a high-tech wheelchair, and the last glimpse he saw of Sujanha, for the moment, was her disappearing in a flash of light, a pensive, worried frown settled deep on her face.
As the days passed, it became even clearer and clearer to Daniel why exactly the bug he had contracted was called "Fever's Touch" by the Furlings. The illness, which seemed to be some horrible mutant combination of a high fever, the flu, pneumonia and maybe bronchitis simultaneously, was completely and utterly misery-inducing. Not even on Abydos had he ever felt this sick. Daniel did not think that he had felt this awful either since he was a graduate student, who did not do a good job of taking care of himself, or since some of his first digs in the Middle East when he was first getting used to working/living conditions there.
His fever spikes came in waves, and though some spikes were high enough to get his doctors rather concerned and make Daniel feel like he was in the Sahara or had been dumped in the Antarctic without survival gear, there were, thankfully, no hallucinations. Daniel had never been sick enough for hallucinations, and that was an experience he would be glad to never, ever have. Seeing things, hearing things, not knowing what was real and what was not, that was beyond disturbing.
He ended up breaking a rib and cracking another by the time the first week was out.
That made even breathing painful.
Ragnar and Ruarc, Asik and Jaax, as well as Sujanha, all came to check on him at the hospital before they returned to the Milky-Way and the Valhalla two days after his admittance. It was nice to have people to worry about him, check on him, ask how he was feeling. Sujanha seemed especially concerned and especially sympathetic, occasionally telling a story or two about one of her bouts with the same illness. She, it seemed, had had bouts that made even Daniel's sound light.
It got lonely once they left.
Not that Daniel had no visitors, but 'doctors,' 'nurses,' and volunteers were different from his friends.
By the time the second week was out, Daniel was still sick, and his cracked rib had turned into a second broken rib. 'Fever's Touch' was a nasty virus. There were no magic medicines that the healers could give him to make him feel better quickly. This was a virus, not an infection. All the Furling healers could do was treat his symptoms, keep him as comfortable as possible, and let him ride it out.
Ragnar and Ruarc appeared occasionally in his room at completely random intervals, sometimes for such a brief time, that if their visits happened at night, he sometimes wondered if he were simply having a vivid dream. Their visits seemed to coincide with breaks between battles when Sujanha could get away with sending her bodyguards to slow boat messages back to Uslisgas, instead of just transmitting it through a Stargate or via long-range transmitters off the Valhalla. Quite concerned for his health, they were completely unwilling to tell him more than the most basic details concerning the ongoing campaign against Heru'ur, and even that much sometimes had to be coaxed out of them.
Rest.
Rest.
(The pallidness and glassiness of his features from the long illness and the high fever and his persistent wracking cough did not exactly help make his friends worry less.)
All I do is rest.
Rest, rest, and more rest.
Daniel was tired from his illness, exhausted from trying to cough up his lungs on a daily basis, and still completely sick and tired of being sick and tired when he was awake, unable to sleep easily however much he wanted to. Sometimes he felt well enough to be bored stiff briefly, but if he tried to shift to get comfortable to write or read, the motions often sent him into a coughing fit or sent his persistent headache flaring back into full, nauseating force.
Being sick and tired was infuriating.
He didn't like being stuck in bed.
There were people fighting … and dying … his friends and acquaintances among the Furlings … his friends back at the SGC … to try to bring down the Goa'uld, and here he was … stuck in a hospital bed. When he felt well enough to care, Daniel hated it.
Sujanha appeared from time to time, too, though even less frequently than Ragnar and Ruarc. She had an entire fleet to command and multiple galaxies to protect. Her time for checking on a sick aid was quite limited, but Daniel was touched that she made the effort. Her level of concern for her subordinates generally, not just Daniel or her bodyguards or other aids in particular, the little people without whom an army or a fleet could not function, made it clear why her people would follow her, as the saying on earth went, to hell and back.
As bad as he was feeling some days, Daniel was not so out of it that he didn't notice that Sujanha always seemed on edge during those visits. As many times as she said that she had had Fever's Touch and with her long illness after being poisoned during the war, he could only imagine that she had spent so much time in the hospital as to have a pathological hatred of them.
Two weeks turned into three weeks, and then three weeks turned into four.
By the end of the fourth week, Daniel was mostly recovered, though still very low on stamina. He was not strong enough to return to the Valhalla, but he could finally go home and sleep in his own bed.
That was a plus he would most definitely take for the moment.
Getting to go back on duty would come soon enough.
Daniel would end up being sidelined on Uslisgas for another two long weeks before being allowed to return to duty. There were only so many books he could read and so many hours of recording observations and scrawling notes in his notebooks he could spend before his still-returning strength gave out or he got a pounding headache.
One wonderful thing did happen during those two further weeks: a solution for Shifu and his genetic memory was finally settled on. His son was almost a year old and growing like a weed, but ever since his birth, his identity as a Harcesis had always been hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles. What did it really mean for a human child to bear the entire genetic memory of the Goa'uld? That was a question that had always troubled Daniel. Obviously, it was a heavy and dangerous burden.
Were those memories accessible to a host or only to a symbiote? If the former, how early?
Were they accessible like other memories, or did someone have to go digging mentally for them? Like with the Tok'ra and their memory retrieval tech…
Was his little boy doomed to become a galactic megalomaniac with delusions of divinity?
Was Daniel going to watch his son's behavior change as he grew?
It would seem rather risky to have the memories easily accessible by the Harcesis alone. They could have delusions of divinity and try to set themselves up as a god. They could reveal secrets that the Goa'uld did not want revealed. Perhaps, if they were tormented by those memories—given what Daniel had seen with his own eyes of the evilness and cruelty of the Goa'uld, who knew what more dark secrets were lurking in their genetic memory—might there even be a risk of the Harcesis being driven to madness or even suicide?
Those were horrible thoughts to contemplate in general, more horrible when this was his son. This was Sha're's son.
Furling healers had long been busy trying to devise a safe method of dealing with those genetic memories in Shifu and any other Harcesis or one similarly plagued who might be encountered before the war was over. Memories were a tricky thing to deal with and a risky one to mess with, especially in children, but given the unknowns, there was a risk in waiting and a risk in not-waiting.
(There were quiet murmurs that such a device for suppressing memories might find use among the most tormented of the survivors of the Great War, as well.)
While the Furlings themselves had little experience with such things, many of their allies did. Nem's people, the Ohnes, had psychic abilities and memory manipulation technology … as Daniel well remembered. The Tok'ra had a memory recall device, though whether it could be used to permanently suppress memories, Daniel did not know. Given the need to transfer their memories from one cloned body to another, the Asgard obviously has experience with dealing with memory. The Azhuth—the bear-sized tigers, who were just as intelligent as any human or humanoid race—were telepathic, which just made them more intimidating!
Between those four allies, the Furlings had been certain that some solution for suppressing genetic memories could be devised.
The effort took months. It took the Ohnes and the Tok'ra collaborating to create an entirely new piece of technology for this purpose, with some assistance from the Asgard and Azhuth with pinpointing and isolating specific memories to be dealt with. This new … thing … of theirs was related to the memory recall device of the Tok'ra and the mind machine that Nem had used, but much different, much more advanced … and less nightmare inducing in its application.
It was rigorously tested and proven to be safe to be used on children, even very young children. What had happened to those other children to need such help … Daniel did not want to know, was afraid to know.
Daniel did not fully understand how it worked despite the lengthy explanations, but it did work.
The healers said it was best to carry out the procedure sooner rather than later. No one knew how soon the Goa'uld genetic memory might rear its ugly head, how soon his son might change.
It did work.
It did work.
Shifu was free, his genetic memories that made him Harcesis permanently blocked.
He was free.
21st of Xeux, 6545 A.S.
(~April 26, 1999)
The Valhalla, Avalon
After being sidelined on Uslisgas for six (Furling) weeks, Daniel returned to the Valhalla at the tail end of the campaign against Heru'ur. The major battles had already been waged and won, though not without heavy losses during some, and only clean-up and consolidation were left to do.
Two days after Daniel's return from sick-leave, one of the odder incidents of his time with the Furlings occurred. It was early afternoon, about an hour after Daniel had come back from lunch. He was sitting in Sujanha's office reading a book on the history of the late-great Alliance, keeping her company while she plowed through a day's worth of paperwork and fresh reports from their allies. He was much recovered after being sick, but after being so sick for so-long, his strength had not fully returned, and Sujanha was purposefully giving him as little to do each day as she thought she could get away with before … Daniel got annoyed at being coddled.
At least I didn't have to wait the usual weeks and weeks and weeks for my ribs to heal. Once he had recovered enough to not run a severe risk of rebreaking an artificially healed rib by attempting to cough up his lungs multiple times a day, a healer had used a Furling healing device—the modern version of a thirty-thousand-year out-of-date Goa'uld healing device—to speed the healing process in his two broken ribs.
There were footsteps in the outer office, and then knuckles drummed on the frame of the open doorway. Mekoxe, an indecipherable, pinched look on his face, was standing there. Sujanha looked up, and from the momentary look of relief on her face, she seemed relieved to have an excuse for a break. As dedicated to efficiency as the Furlings were, a dislike of paperwork still seemed to be a universal constant among generals.
"The Asgard vessel Glaðsheimr just dropped out of hyperspace," the ship's communications officer said. "Commander Adair is asking for permission to beam over."
Adair … that's a Furling name. There was a pattern to Furling names. Most masculine names ended in -ir, -ar, -arr, or the like, while many feminine names ended in -ra. He could be an Asgard, though. There were Furlings with Asgardian names, so why not vice versa?
Sujanha went rigid with alarm, and if she had been human—given the look in her eyes—she would probably have been blanching sickly white, too. Daniel had gotten reasonably good at reading the looks in her eyes during his time with the Furlings. Her black eyes went wide in some combination of shock and fear, before anger quickly replaced shock.
"What is that fool boy doing here?" She growled, a rumbling, angry sound that made the hairs on the back of Daniel's neck stand on end. "He knows the orders." Her anger usually ran cold, but whatever specifics Daniel was missing made this an exception.
Oh, boy!
Mekoxe did not respond, his face now a calm mask, but simply waited, giving Sujanha a moment to draw her temper back under control. Sujanha closed her eyes and pressed her paws together, forcing herself back under control. After a few moments, she spoke again. Her voice was frigid. "Send him down, please."
"Of course, commander." Mekoxe bowed and withdrew. A second later, Daniel heard the telltale sounds of a beam out.
Sujanha rose and turned to Daniel. "Why don't you take your book and find someplace else to sit for a time?" Her statement was phrased as a request but was clearly an order. "It is still close enough to the midday-meal hour that you might find Ragnar and Ruarc in the food hall."
Daniel was certainly going to go look for them and ask them about this mystery with this … Commander Adair. Ruarc was always happy to explain things if they weren't private and not reticent, when necessary, to politely tell him to mind his own business.
Daniel closed his book, got up, and stretched. "Sure," he said carefully. "Do you want me to come back after a certain time, or wait until you call?"
"I'll call for you when I need you. Until then, your time is your own."
Nodding, Daniel bowed perfunctorily and then left the office, passing a Furling—a Maskilim built like a Jaguar but with strange white-grey fur and very pale blue eyes … Is albinism a thing among Furlings?—who must have been the hapless Commander Adair.
Why is there a Furling in the Asgardian military?
There are some Asgard commanders under Sujanha, so why not the reverse … I guess?
Sujanha had guessed correctly, and as Daniel entered the mess hall, he instantly spied Ragnar and Ruarc, sitting at a corner table that gave them a good view of the entire room. Ruarc had finished eating and was sipping on a mug of tea. Ragnar, who must have arrived later, was alternating plowing his way through a plate of meat and Furling potatoes and telling some story to his brother, complete with wild paw gestures. They both paused and greeted Daniel cheerfully as he slid into a seat across from them.
"Is there any reason why an Asgard commander named Adair is in big trouble with the Commander just for showing up?" Daniel asked once Ragnar had finished his story.
Ruarc, who had just taken a big gulp of tea, went bug-eyed and choked on his tea. "The Prince is here?" He spluttered, coughing.
Prince?
"This will be interesting," said Ragnar with greatly exaggerated mock-cheerfulness as he pounded his brother on the back until he stopped trying to hack up a lung. "Cover your ears."
Uh … okay?
Is Sujanha going to be blistering his ears or something?
Daniel looked back and forth between the two brothers, more and more confused. That a Furling prince was an Asgard commander was unusual, but what about his presence here was so surprising? He was unfamiliar with the family tree of the Imperial House that there being others of the same general generation as Sujanha and Anarr was not surprising.
Ruarc explained in a hoarse voice, "Adair is the Crown Prince of the Furlings. The commanders are his cousins. Commander Thor has standing orders from the Asgard High Council not to send Adair to the same region where the Supreme Commanders are during war time. That is for the same reason that Sujanha and Anarr may not be part of the same attack and, even outside of battle, only remain on the same ship for the briefest of times and only in Furling-controlled space. It would be a disaster if all three were injured or killed at the same time."
I remember that rule from the first strike against Sokar?
Ooohhhhh, so this is the Crown Prince. I'd never heard his name before.
Sujanha rarely talked about her family. Aside from her brother, Daniel had only ever heard her briefly mention her brother's children. From a comment that Ruarc had made before the attack on Netu months earlier, it was clear that much of her family had passed during the Great War. The Furling Imperial House was more like royals from a long, long time ago on earth. Lead by example, and lead from the front. That didn't aid survivability in wartime, though it inspired loyalty.
"How is the commander related to the Crown Prince precisely?" Daniel asked.
"Her father Atar was the much younger brother of the late king, Andórr, which makes the commanders the cousins of the current king, Ívarr, and cousins of his son Adair," Ragnar explained.
"The Commanders are second and third in line. If they all perished," Ruarc continued, "the line of succession would fall to Anarr's son, Lord Ansurr. It would have fallen to Odin, Anarr's eldest, but he died during the war."
Yea, he was her aide.
He was poisoned at the same time she was.
"And Ansurr is only …," Ruarc paused and tilted his head, thinking, "34 or 35. I don't remember when in the year is his birthday. Most Furling sub-species, including the Maskilim, do not come of age until 250 years."
Does the Crown Prince not have children then?
And why is Sujanha in front of Ansurr?
So Ansurr was quite underage. No one wanted a child of that age to be forced to rule long before his time. "Oh! So … Commander is in front of Commander Anarr's son … not behind? Does the Crown Prince have no children then?"
Ruarc nodded. "The line of succession falls by age irrespective of blood-closeness to the reigning High King or Queen. If Commander Anarr had been born before Prince Adair, he would have been Crown Prince instead. Thus, the commanders are second and third, with Lord Ansurr following them, and the Crown Prince married fifteen years ago, and his son follows Lord Ansurr. Following them both is Commander Anarr's daughter, who is only … seven, I think. Midgard is different?"
Only six in the line of succession, and half kids?
Yikes. That's risky.
The Furling method was odd, compared to what Daniel was used to from modern and ancient monarchies on earth, but he supposed their way made sense. It made little logical sense to have an underage kid like Ansurr or the Crown Prince's son ruling, who would both need regents, when an adult like Sujanha was available to take the throne.
"Quite," Daniel replied. "There are several different methods of succession on earth. In most monarchies, they follow absolute primogeniture, where the first-born child succeeds regardless of gender, or male-preference primogeniture, where sons succeed first even if born later and then daughters," Daniel replied. "Is the Crown Prince going to be in big trouble? What's her full title?"
Ruarc had to think a minute before he answered, "Her Imperial Highness, Supreme Commander Sujanha Staðfastur. As to the prince, it depends on why he violated standing orders. She'll be as worried about his safety as she is angry about the orders."
Daniel absorbed this and then asked, "What does Staðfastur mean?" The word sounded Scandinavian, which meant it might be Asgard. Daniel had never been that good at the Scandinavian languages. He had also never heard either Supreme Commander addressed with a family name or a house name (like Windsor), so Staðfastur was more likely an epithet.
"The Steadfast," Ragnar answered before his brother could, "Sujanha the Steadfast. It is the title that the Asgard gave her towards the end of the Great War."
It seemed like a very fitting epithet for all Daniel knew of her.
