Cello Suite No. 1

Cello Suite No. 1

The Marines fired at the spider, but it was too late; it had already pierced Sam's back with its fangs. Someone shouted something about a medical team, but it wouldn't have made a difference. In the blink of an eye, Sam had disappeared. There was no light, or anything. One moment she was there and the next she wasn't.

The Marines were scrambling to get a hold of the video camera, making sure they still had it, while others were pointing their P-90s at the opening, daring one more of those things to appear.

Colonel Mitchell had left the temple after make the Marines set up the ladder for Sam. He and Teal'c had accompanied Daniel on a quick walk around the temple, looking to see if there was more writing. Their walk was cut short when they heard the guns firing and the three of them raced back up the steps, Cameron demanding to know what happened.

One of the two Marines hurriedly explained the situation to him. Cameron gritted his teeth and his hand tightened on the butt of his P-90.

“Get everything packed up, now. We're going back.”

~

“Sam,” Kahlen was kneeling next to Sam's side, her hands bloody, as she tried to rouse Sam. “Sam, wake up. Come on, Sam...” she patted Sam's cheek gently as she continued to look around their position, making sure that no other creature popped up.

Sam's eyes opened blearily. Kahlen breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sam, can you talk to me?” her eyes focused on Kahlen.

“Kahlen!” Sam was surprised. “What...” she tried to sit up with Kahlen's help and looked around them. “Where...?”

“I don't know where we are, but as far as I can tell, it's an uninhabited planet.” Kahlen stood, offering her hand to Sam, helping to pull her up. “How did you get here?”

“We've been trying to figure out how you disappeared in the first place and we've gone back to that temple twice. The first time to get more pictures of the writing and to get one of those spider things to take back to the SGC so we could look at it.” Kahlen nodded. “Then we went back again to take a closer look at the opening they came out of. There was definitely a power source up there with them and I managed to get some video of what ever was in there...” her eyes unfocused, trying to remember what had happened next.

“There was another one of them, the spiders, I mean. I took me by surprise and I tried to get down the ladder as fast as I could, but when I was back on the ground the thing jumped on me and...” her hands flew over her shoulders, trying to feel her back. “I don't know what it did, but it hurt.”

She tried looking over her shoulders to see if there were any marks; Kahlen swatted her hands away and looked for herself.

“I wouldn't expect there to be marks on you, because when I woke here, I did remember the pain, but there wasn't anything that hurt when I woke up.” her hand smoothed over Sam's shoulder blades, her shirt unripped.

Sam was looking around them curiously when her gaze fell on the now still creature, a black heap in the golden meadow.

“What's that?” Kahlen looked to what she was pointing at.

“Oh. That's the thing that tried to kill me then kill you.” She held up her bloody knife. “See? I don't really know what kind of creature it is, but even when it's stabbed repeatedly in the neck it still takes a while to die. I almost felt sorry for it.” Sam raised her eyebrows.

“Right, well, being out here in the open isn't such a good idea. There could be more of them. And, it's getting dark, too.” Kahlen nodded.

“Yeah, I know. Come on.” She started walking towards the tree line again. It was only a few yards away now. “For the few days that I was here, I went as far as I could that way,” she pointed behind them, “and I ended up at a dead end. Well, cliff, really. I couldn't see a safe way down the cliff side without seriously injuring myself, so I decided to come back this way. Hopefully we'll have more luck.”

The two of them barely reached the tree line by the time the sun had set and thick darkness surrounded them.

“Here, I'll help you up.” Kahlen made a motion with her hands, but Sam couldn't see it in the darkness.

“Up where?”

“A tree. I've been sleeping up in the branches of the trees in case something tried to come find me at night. I'll help you up. You'll need to find a thick branch and wrap your legs around it as you lean back against the tree. It's not really comfortable, but it works.” Sam reached her hand out, trying to find Kahlen. She smiled when she managed to find the other woman's arm.

“Ok. Let's try to find ourselves a good tree then, if we can.” Kahlen grasped Sam's arm with hers and the two carefully felt their way around the trees until they found one that appeared to be sturdy enough to hold both of them with no problem.

~

“Colonel Mitchell, I'm restricting all gate travel unless necessary. I want everyone that's available to start working on resolving this problem. The whole science department is being given a copy of the video Carter was able to get before she disappeared. The linguists are all working with Dr. Jackson to translate the rest of the text.” Cameron nodded, his jaw clenched tightly. He was angry with himself that he had managed to lose two people over the course of one week and he didn't think he'd ever forgive himself for it.

“Now, since Carter is gone, I'm going to send a copy of everything to Dr. McKay in Atlantis – he's the only other person that I know of that can rival Carter with his intelligence. I suggest you make another video message to explain to them what's happening and what we need them to do.”

Cameron nodded and left the briefing room, Teal'c, Daniel and Vala following along after him.