Hi all, and thanks for the reviews. Also, to all the people who added this story (and me) to their alerts.

To jasminesmommy, at the moment, I'm just creating a bit of back story for the character, but not to worry, there will be plenty of John Sheppard to come!

To bailey1ak, I'm so glad you are liking it. Yes, I wanted to explore that topic, of if Sheppard had a sister, how would they interact? What kind of person would she be? Would she be very similar or the complete opposite? But I mostly wanted to explore their relationship and backstory.

Here's the next chapter, guys. I love to hear your feedback. Enjoy!

--Chapter 2 – Tagrea--

Sierra stared apprehensively at the two-storey, stone ring before her, with its shimmering, blue puddle casting eerie shadows around the room. She reached a hand out to dip it into the watery surface; it was a strange sensation, like dipping her fingers into a vat of cold oil.

"Come on, Sheppard," came a voice behind her, jolting her out of her revere of the wormhole. "This end ain't exactly the lightest."

Sierra glanced back at Jones who was holding one end of the crate they had to transport to Tagrea. The rest of the squad had gone through already, all of them carrying various crates of parts and supplies the Prometheus and her crew needed. Jones currently stood struggling with the crate, and an impatient look on his face that screamed "Get a move on or I'll push you through the damn 'gate!" she looked up at General Hammond in the control room, who merely nodded to her. Sierra raised her hand in a wave before turning back to the Gate and plunging head first through the puddle.

She was instantly hit with the adrenaline rush of a lifetime. She could feel the sensation of being torn molecule from molecule, flung across the vastness of space and then lumped back together, all in the space of a few milliseconds; and there was no time for her to get Goosebumps or throw up.

Sierra stepped out of the wormhole in a completely different building than the one she had left. She paused for a moment to catch her breath.

The moment, however, was short lived. Sierra had not expected to exit the wormhole on a set of steps. She stumbled as she tried to regain her footing. As Jones exited the wormhole, her sudden difference in altitude caused the contents at the heavy end of the crate to shift towards Sierra's end. The extra weight forced her to lunge forward several feet, pulling the crate and Jones with her. They all ended up in a heap on the polished stone floor of a vast hall, tools, parts and limbs everywhere.

"Careful!" screeched a high-pitched, irritating, male voice. Rubber soled shoes squeaked across the marble floor as Sierra and Jones started to picked themselves up off the floor. The two officers set the crate right again and, whist rubbing various bruised body parts, began collecting the tools and parts that had gotten scattered around the hall.

The man stood over Sierra. "Do be more careful," he whined. "You will scratch the floors of our Ancestor's Hall of Honors! This hall holds the history of our people!"

"So it's a museum," Sierra remarked, glancing up at the vaulted ceiling. The sounds of the man's shoes and Jones dropping all the tools back into the crate echoed through the hall.

"It is not just a museum!" cried the man, his voice rising in pitch. "It is all we have left of our past! It is the archive of who we are as a people! As a society!"

"Look, we're sorry, OK?" Sierra almost shouted, the irritating man testing her temper. She opened her mouth again to speak the first thing that came to her mind (which wouldn't have been very pleasant) when she saw Major Carter walking towards them with their new CO, Colonel Ronson, and shut her mouth instead. Across the hall, behind them, Sierra saw the rest of their squad head through a doorway that lead to the foyer. Mitchell stood by the doorway, directing the officers to the exit. He almost laughed and shook his head at them. Sierra sighed. Hell of a way to make an impression.

The colonel and the major came level with the irksome man and Sierra and Jones snapped to attention.

"You're not hindering our repairs," Colonel Ronson said in his calm manner. "Are you, Eros?"

Eros frowned, folding his arms with a grumble. "The sooner you and your people are done bringing more pieces for your craft, the sooner my museum will get back to normal." The man emitted a high-pitched huff and stomped off towards the opposite end of the hall.

The colonel nodded to Sierra and Jones, who relaxed again and continued packing the parts back into the crate. When all the pieces had been picked up, they followed Ronson and Carter into the foyer and out onto the street of an alien city.

City buildings towered above them and Sierra couldn't help but gaze in wonder as they loaded the crates onto a motorcade and drove through the centre of the city. The city structure reminded Sierra of New York fifty years ago. The architecture was amazingly old fashioned, but also original. Driving through these streets took her back to the time when her mother had taken her and her brothers to visit an aunt in Kansas City.

Before long, they had reached an industrial area of the city. The high-rises became less frequent and office blocks merged into apartment buildings. Several miles later, the motorcade came to what Sierra could only describe as an air-field. Numerous hangers lined one side of the large, mostly empty lot, and further down they gave way to what Sierra assumed was a terminal. It appeared like the Tagreans were still at their blimp stage of aeronautical development. A number of the over-sized hot-air balloons sat outside the terminal awaiting passengers to take them to various other destinations around the continent.

The motorcade veered off to the left towards a restricted area. They passed through a large set of gates and stopped in front of a massive hanger; the doors themselves had to be ten stories high.

"Alright," called Colonel Ronson, "Let's get these parts unloaded and onto the ship."

"Ship?" Sierra said to Mitchell. "I don't see a ship."

The major just gave her a crooked grin and gestured for her to take one end of a crate while he took the other. Their small procession of officers and machine parts made its way to a smaller door to the right of the much larger ones. A staff sergeant stood at attention on the outside of the door and allowed them in.

It was what was inside the hanger that really took Sierra's breath away. She had seen pictures of the Prometheus during briefings and lectures, but they had hardly prepared her for the sight of the X-303. It stood nearly as tall as the doors (which was good, at least it would fit out of them) and was almost a city block long. Scaffolding and cranes surrounded the ship, sparks falling harmlessly to the concrete floor. The din was appalling.

At least Sierra wasn't the only one ogling the ship. Jones, Ash and Gibbs had also stopped in their tracks and were staring, mouths agape, at the starship. Banks and Green were pinching each other to be sure what they were seeing was real.

"Come on, guys," Mitchell said, jolting the squad out of their ogling. "This ship ain't gonna fix itself."

--XXX--

The remainder of the repairs took about a month to fully complete. In the mean time, the squadron took their chance to learn all they could about the F-302. When it came to flying the hybrid fighter, lectures and 3D renders could only show them so much. The squadron spent every hour they could flying the fighters in Tagrea's atmosphere. They ran simulations and flew in various formations, building teamwork bonds and learning the other pilots' abilities. All the pilots were the best in the Force; which was why they had all been chosen for the Blue Phoenix mission.

But none were more skilled than Mitchell. Sierra felt incredibly honored to be flying with a pilot like Mitchell. He handled every simulation with ease and confidence, and handled the stick with a skill that Sierra had seen in only one other person: John. When Sierra used to watch her brother fly a chopper, she used to wish she could be as confident and as skilled as he was. Similar feelings came to her as she sat in the co-pilot seat and called her readings to Mitchell.

In her off-time, Sierra would hang out with the other pilots in the barracks that sat next to the hanger. Every third night Warner and Patterson would hold a poker tournament in the Mess hall after lights out. The majors and the colonel were bunked in a separate barracks on the other side of the hanger, so there was no worry of being caught. They got two to a bathroom even. In their barracks however, they were cramped in four to a room with a communal bathroom at the end of the building. There were two other women on the squadron and, thankfully, Sierra had been bunked with them with one bunk to spare.

The other two women on the squad were Lieutenant Carrie Stevenson and Captain Yuko Gander. Lt. Stevenson was a young, dark skinned, fiery, Chicago-born girl and Capt. Gander was part-Korean, her mother a refugee that came over during the war. The three of them struck up a friendship and a pact to help each other out in this male-dominated field.

On the days that the weather was too bad for flying, they were required to do something productive. Sierra chose to learn as much as she could about the ship as possible. She stood over the technicians shoulders as they tweaked the systems, she handed the engineers their tools as they maintained the engines, and even offered to help Carter as she made modifications to the ship. She was surprised when the major welcomed her help.

Sierra also asked those she watched if she could learn about some of the things they were repairing. The technicians merely waved her away and told her she was distracting them, the engineers blew her off, telling her that it was all too complicated for her understand, while Carter was the only one who agreed to teach her. Sierra would ask her about each of the crystals in the interface panels and Carter would explain their functions. Soon, Sierra knew enough to know which crystals to move and swap when the major would say that they need to bypass some of the secondary systems.

And finally the repairs were finished. Colonel Ronson decided that it was something to celebrate. The day they finished, the colonel got some of the sergeants to put up some trestle tables directly under the Prometheus and the staff from the Mess gave them a spread like something Sierra had seen at a Bar Mitzvah or her cousins wedding. There was food, beer and pretzels, a lot of laughter and jokes not to mention one small food fight.

As the sun began to set, Sierra was sipping a beer, talking to Carter and Mitchell about their collage days when Carrie tapped Sierra on the shoulder. Carrie had been looking for Yuko for the last twenty minutes. Apparently Yuko had gone to get the two of them drinks and never came back.

The four of them looked all around the hanger and even in both the barracks buildings. Half an hour later they had searched the surrounding buildings but still hadn't found the young captain. Carter and Ronson organized a search of the Prometheus while a quick head count and roll-call revealed that one other crew member was missing as well.

While Carter and Ronson searched the ship, Sierra joined Mitchell in searching outside the buildings and the surrounding area. As Sierra rounded the back of the Tagreans version of a refueling station, the light from her torch fell on a figure curled up between the buildings. She crouched over the figure, the flashlight beam falling on their face. It was the other missing crew member. Sierra called out to Mitchell as she gently rolled him onto his back. Capt. Forbes was the name on his overalls. From what Sierra could remember he was an engineer.

"Who is it?" Mitchell asked as he knelt beside her.

"Forbes," she replied. Sierra shone her torch down the alley. "But no sign of Gander."

"Is he OK?" Mitchell asked as Forbes groaned and groggily opened his eyes.

"Looks like he took quite a hit on the head," Sierra said. There was blood on his shirt and in his sandy blonde hair.

"What happened, Forbes?" Mitchell asked as they helped the engineer sit up. "Where's Gander?"

"They took her," he mumbled. "Three guys jumped us. They were wearin' black and ... their faces were covered. They took her," he moaned. "They took Yuko."

Mitchell pulled out his radio and reported what Forbes had told them to Colonel Ronson. Sierra smelt what she identified as fresh paint and shone her torch on the corrugated iron wall above her head. A string of what Sierra could only guess were letters had been roughly printed on the metal in black paint. Sierra drew Mitchell's attention to it and he also reported this to Ronson. Sierra just made out Ronson's order to pursue with caution. Pulling out his sidearm, Mitchell turned to order Sierra to stay with Forbes, only to find her standing ready, her own sidearm drawn.

"There's no way I'm staying out of this, Sir," Sierra said. "She's my friend."

Mitchell rolled his eyes and took the lead. "Sheppard, Remind me to dock your holiday pay."

"Yes, Sir."

They moved silently down the alley, checking for any signs of Yuko and her abductors. Their flashlights cut through the dark, revealing rusted pieces of scrap metal, discarded paper bags and pieces of plastic. To Sierra it looked like the Tagreans were well on their way to becoming just like Earth.

Mitchell's radio crackled, and Colonel Ronson's voice floated through the alleyway.

"Mitchell, I have just been informed that the men that attacked Forbes and Gander may be part of a movement that is protesting against our presence here on Tagrea."

"So this could be some kind of retaliation against us?" Mitchell asked.

"It's possible, but we're not ruling anything else out just yet."

"Like what, Sir?"

"Enemy nations on Tagrea, political opponents of Chairman Ashwan, civilian activists," Carter said, her voice rebounding off the tin walls that surrounded them. Mitchell turned the volume on the radio down a little.

"Do we know where they would have taken Gander?" Mitchell asked as Sierra searched an empty store room. She shook her head at the major and they continued up the alley.

"We have locked down the air-field – no one in or out. We're also using the sensors on the Prometheus to try and isolate their life signs."

"Yes, Sir."

"Ok, Mitchell, we've found them; we're sending back-up." Carter directed them to a warehouse on the northern side of the air-field. According to the Tagreans, the warehouse had been abandoned when the larger hangers for their commercial air-craft had been built on the other side of the field. Sierra and Mitchell quickly located a side door and entered the warehouse.

The side door opened onto a catwalk that crossed the vast span of the warehouse, suspended by wires from the ceiling. Mitchell refused to use the walk as he was afraid it might strain under their weight and alert the kidnappers to their presence.

Instead they made their way down to a mezzanine level, where they spied the kidnappers standing in the middle of the open space. There were three of them, and just like Forbes had said, all dressed in black. They all held weapons that were native to the Tagreans, but foreign to Sierra. Eventually she spied Yuko; she had been trussed up, her hands tied behind her back, her feet tied, and a gag stuffed in her mouth. The kidnappers didn't seem all that interested in her as they watched who Sierra assumed was their leader abuse someone on what looked like a primitive cell phone. The leader was demanding to know what was taking so long with their transport off the base.

Mitchell's radio sounded again, and he turned the volume down even further.

"We're in position, Mitchell," Carter whispered to them. "What's the situation?"

Mitchell described what they were seeing and advised against using smoke to confuse, as either side could easily trample on Gander. Carter voiced the affirmative and seconds later, Mitchell and Sierra dropped down from the mezzanine level to join the marines that were sweeping towards the kidnappers.

Thankfully they had the element of surprise on their side and they all immediately dropped their weapons and raised their hands. As soon as Carter and Mitchell had the kidnappers restrained, Sierra went to help her friend.

Yuko was a bit bruised, shaken but otherwise unharmed. She asked about Forbes and Sierra told her that he was fine. Nursing a twisted ankle, Sierra helped Yuko back to the main hanger.

--XXX--

Thankfully, the attack from the Kiroshi Movement (what the kidnappers had called themselves) hadn't delayed their launch at all. It took them two days to collect all their equipment and belongings that may have scattered around the air-field. The 302s were loaded back into the hanger and the Prometheus taxied to a runway in a similar fashion to a 747. She remained there as the crew boarded her and settled in for the journey home.

Sierra and some of the other newer crew members stood by the window in the Mess as the F-303 rose up through the Tagrean sky. Eventually, clouds gave way to stars and Sierra felt her heart swell with the prospect of new horizons.

--XXX--