Cello Suite No. 1

Cello Suite No. 1

“Come on, Sheppard. You have to try harder than that.” Ronon's smirking voice made John want to throw Ronon down on the mat for a change so badly he could almost taste the victory.

“I am trying,” he grunted trying to force his shoulder into Ronon's gut to take him down. Ronon quickly counter maneuvered and pinned John to the ground. Again. For the nth time that day.

“Alright, I've had enough.” John managed to pull himself off the floor with at least some dignity still intact and glared half-heartedly at Ronon.

“You know, constantly throwing my ass onto the floor, isn't going to teach me much.”

“Actually, you able to stay on your feet for a good ten seconds now instead of ending up on your ass almost instantly.” John laughed, the two of them heading out of the gym towards the mess for lunch.

“Yeah, ok, I'll give you that.”

When they reached the mess, there were only a few groups of people – the whole science department was having a field day, well, field week actually, with some new gizmo they had found recently. John and Ronon were able to quickly grab the food that they wanted and took a seat at a table near a corner, both of them sitting on the same side, both wanting to have an unobstructed view of their surroundings.

John was trying to get in some extra sparring with Ronon today, not looking forward to the data burst that was suppose to come today – receiving new data bursts always meant just a little bit more paper work for him to deal with.

Not that he slacked off per se, he just tended to... have dire emergencies spontaneously spring up that prevented him from doing his paper work. And if those emergencies just happened to take place around the time the paper work was to be done, well... you couldn't blame him, right?

John and Ronon were about halfway done with their lunch when the two of them spotted Elizabeth entering the mess and heading towards them, a data pad in her hand.

“John, you've received a video message from Colonel Mitchell. It's red flagged and General Landry said that is was urgent that you view it immediately,” she stated, handing John the data pad. His brows knit together in slight confusion.

“Wonder what it's about.” Uncaring about the two people around him, he opened up the video and started to watch it. Colonel Mitchell's voice seemed to be louder than it should have been.

“Colonel Sheppard, it is my regret to inform you that on a very routine mission two days prior, there was an accident concerning you sister.” John clenched his teeth; his mind telling him that he should stand up and go some where private to view the rest of the message but his body seemed unwilling to comply. Ronon had a look of curiosity and sympathy mixed together, while Elizabeth looked shocked to hear that John simply had a sister.

“...the temple in which she was working started to collapse while she still worked inside, looking at the text,” John steeled himself, ready to hear that she was crushed, or something. But he didn't expect –

“Colonel – John, I don't know how to say this but she simply vanished. She was attacked by one of the spider like creatures that Daniel is now saying was some sort of machine to transport her somewhere, but we don't know where she is. As far as we know, where ever that thing took her, or sent her, we can't reach with our gate because apparently, according to the text that's still being translated, it sends the people outside the reach of the Milky Way Galaxy.”

Cameron paused on the screen, looking to the person holding the camera. There was a slight shuffling around before Colonel Carter moved on screen, next to Cameron.

“Colonel Sheppard,” she paused, mentally shaking herself, “we brought back one of the spider like creatures and I've looked at it myself, but all of my tests show that the only detail about the creatures is that their blood, or what would constitute as their blood, like like oil or fuel. Otherwise, they're completely organic. But we're doing our best here to try to figure out what happened.”

“We'll contact you again when we know more.” the video ended.

John closed his eyes for a brief moment before standing quickly, the data pad clutched tightly in his hands. He ignored Elizabeth's calls for his attention and nearly ran his way back to his room. He tossed the pad onto his bed and stripped quickly and efficiently; almost instantly changing into his running clothes. He threw his ear piece on the bed, too, next to the pad and ran from his room, just needing to run. Just needing to think.

His sister was missing – sweet, little Kahlen... – and there was nothing he could do about it. He pushed himself to run faster, dodging into a section of the city that was always deserted; a section of the city where he had spent countless hours just running – either needing to forget or needing to remember.

~

Kahlen had been on the planet for what she thought was close to maybe a week, possibly more. The days seemed to be extremely short and the nights twice as long. She had found a small stream of water and managed to find a bush of wild berries that closely resembled raspberries but tasted like cherries. The creature that originally had chased her was no where to be found when she moved during the day; but she always kept an eye out for it.

The planet itself seemed to be uninhabited – she hadn't run into any civilization, or village, or tribe, or anything. There did seem to be an abundance of deer-like creatures, though their antlers looked to be about twice the size of those on earth. Kahlen made a note to herself: even if she did get hungry enough to try to kill one of them, she wasn't going to and risk confronting an angry alpha male with antlers like those.

She had her pocket knife, which wasn't very odd because every other form of technology that she had on her and disappeared when she appeared on this new planet. She was left only in her BDUs. But with her knife she was able to catch what looked to be either a salmon or a trout like fish from the stream – she was even able to gut it without getting it's insides all over herself. Crating a fire was another thing, though. She knew it would be better if she cooked the fish before she ate it but finding a place to put down the fish and then finding the right means to create a fire would take too long.

“Well, if I get sick, I'll know better next time,” she proclaimed before biting into the pieces of fish she had cut. Every day – she she thought every day on this planet might only consist fifteen or sixteen hours at most – she moved quickly during the day time, looking for some sort of clue as to where she was; some ruins, a statue, a temple, a gate. Anything.