CHAPTER THREE
Alone
in her quarters, Tenal Ka unpacked the bags she had taken with her on her trip
to Dathomir. Unpacking had taken longer
than she had anticipated, even though she had only brought necessary items with
her: some clothes, toiletries, and her lightsaber.
After dinner, Jacen had asked if she wanted
to take a walk with him but she had turned him down with the excuse that she
was tired and would probably retire to her room early. Jacen had regarded her curiously because she
always seemed to have endless energy no matter what the time of day, but he did
not push the subject. Tenal Ka was
grateful for that, preferring not to have to lie to him.
Tenal Ka blew out a frustrated breath
as she placed the last of her clothes in her dresser drawer. Two weeks ago her life had been completely
normal and now she was cursed with a disease for which there was no cure. She sat down on the hard wooden chair in her
sparsely furnished room remembering how it had all started.
It was springtime on Dathomir, so she
had been helping her fellow clan sisters harvest the crops. After awhile she had begun to feel
light-headed and dizzy. Thinking it was
nothing more then being out of shape from participating in such rigorous
labour, she had taken a drink of water from the Singing Mountain Clan's well
and went back to work.
The next thing she remembered after
that was lying on a bed in her grandmother's home, feverish and
disoriented. Augwynne was extremely
worried about her granddaughter, and when even the clan's own chants and
medicines had no effect on her condition, Augwynne felt she had no other choice
but to contact Tenal Ka's mother, and tell her there was something wrong with
her daughter.
Despite the fact that the people of
Dathomir lived primitive and relatively simple lives, each clan kept a comm
system in case of an emergency. And
that had definitely been one of those times. Augwynne had contacted her daughter, Teneniel Djo and her husband,
Prince Isolder, explaining to them Tenal Ka's condition.
Tenal Ka's power hungry grandmother,
Ta'a Chume, who was back on Hapes, monitored all calls to the Royal Family, and
had heard every word of the conversation. Before Tenal Ka knew what was happening, her grandmother's two most
trusted and loyal assistants were whisking her off to Hapes, where she would
receive the best medical care possible.
The tests had been the worst part,
Tenal Ka remembered with a shutter. The
continuous poking with needles to take blood and other fluids from her body
occurred daily, so the doctors could perform a million different tests to
discover what was wrong with her. A few
days later, they had the results.
Sinapsisden was what they called
it. A rare disease that could only be
caught if the individual had Dathomirian genes. And Tenal Ka was half-Dathomirian.
It was a disease that slowly attacked
the entire body, invading blood vessels with diseased organisms and then
eventually making its way to the victim's immune system. When this happened, the body's T-cells begin
to die off and the body could no longer get rid of the foreign organisms in
it. At this stage in the disease death
becomes inevitable.
There was no known cure for
Sinapsisden. Yet.
Common symptoms of Sinapsisden in its
earliest stages included nausea, dizziness, headaches, fevers, and
fatigue. The latter stages of the
disease, when it began to take its toll on the body, was characterized by the
same symptoms, except they were much more severe and did not disappear after a
couple of days.
The doctors had been happy to inform
her that she was in the earliest stages of Sinapsisden. They had told her that many people who were
diagnosed with this disease went on to live long and relatively healthy lives. Since Tenal Ka was young and strong, they
felt she stood a strong chance of leading a normal life, if she took care of
herself. The only part of a normal life
she would never have was children. The
risks were too high that she could end up passing the disease along to any
children she had.
She and Jacen were still young so they
had never seriously talked about having children, and now that idea had been
snatched away from her before she even had a chance to consider children
playing a role in her future.
Ta'a Chume had been more than a little
upset when her granddaughter had decided to come back to Yavin Four and act as
if nothing had changed. To Tenal Ka,
nothing really had changed. She was
still a Jedi Knight and had every intention of continuing to fulfill her duties
as one. She was not going to let some
disease that could take years to take effect ruin her life now.
It had taken some strong persuading on
her part, with the help of her parents, to convince her grandmother that she
should be allowed to continue to live a normal life, instead of being
bed-ridden in some hospital when a cure may never be found in her
lifetime. Ta'a Chume had eventually
caved in on the condition that Tenal Ka attend monthly checkups on Hapes –
which she had grudgingly agreed to, and that she take the medication the
doctor's had prescribed for her if she began to feel any of the symptoms
associated with Sinapsisden. The
medication would not cure her but it would help her to keep the disease under
control.
Tenal Ka grabbed the satchel off her
bed that still held the prescription pills in it, and took them out of it. She had no intention of taking the
medication unless her illness became absolutely unbearable. She planned to meditate regularly and find a
way to use the force to keep it under control.
She did not want her friends or even
Jacen to treat her differently, or give her any special treatment because of
her condition. That was one of the
reasons she had not told any of them yet. The other being she still had not figured out how to tell any of
her friends that she was sick with a disease that there was no cure for. It still had not completely sunk in for her
the painful reality of it all. She had
always kept herself in peak condition, exercising regularly and eating
healthy. It just did not seem possible
that something like this could happen to her.
Of course, Tenal Ka knew she was being
stubborn and maybe even a little selfish for keeping something like this a
secret, because she knew her friends would only want to help her. For now though, she wanted to keep this
disease to herself, and continue to move forward with her life as if nothing
had happened.
There was a knock at her door then,
and she quickly shoved the bottle of pills back in the bag.
Without waiting for a response, the
door to her room swung open, revealing a flush-faced Tahiri.
"You better come to Master Skywalker's
office," Tahiri said out of breath, "Zekk was just attacked out on the landing
field,"
Tenal Ka needed no further
encouragement. In a split second, she
was on her feet and following Tahiri out the door to Master Skywalker's
office. Her own problems suddenly
seemed insignificant, now that one of her friends needed her.
"I have no idea who they were, or what
they wanted," Zekk explained to the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, "they just
appeared out of nowhere and started shooting at me,"
Luke nodded silently, and continued to
listen carefully as Zekk relayed the story of his attack. What Zekk was describing didn't ring a bell
in his mind either, but what did seem to interest the Great Jedi Master, along
with everyone else present in the room, was the strange tattoo they found on
the body that Zekk and Anakin had brought back.
Tenal Ka and Tahiri who had recently
joined them, stood near the back of the room, while Jacen and Jaina stood near
Zekk and Anakin in front of Master Skywalker's desk.
"I should've been there," said Jaina.
"Don't beat yourself up about it,
Jaina," Zekk told her, "you didn't know what was going to happen,"
"And it's not like they were actually
trying to kill him," Jacen added, "their blasters were set on stun,"
Anakin spoke up from his seat beside
Zekk, "That's what's been bothering me. If they weren't trying to kill you, then the only possible explanation
is – "
"They wanted to capture me alive," Zekk
finished for him.
"That does seem like the logical
conclusion," conceded Tenal Ka.
"It's the only conclusion," he
insisted, "they only came after me, and didn't go anywhere near the Jedi
Academy, even though they had ample opportunity to."
"Who would want to kidnap you?" Said Tahiri.
"I wish I knew," Zekk replied with a
shrug of his shoulders.
Jaina
looked thoughtful. "What about that
tattoo on the guy you brought back? And
didn't Anakin say that he noticed one of the other attackers had the same
marking on him?"
"It
looks familiar to me, but I can't remember where I've seen it before," said
Zekk, only half-truthfully.
Anakin
pressed his palms together and got that faraway look on his face when he was
trying to solve a problem. "We should
check the New Republic's archives," he said at last, "maybe there's a record of
that marking in there somewhere,"
Luke
nodded his agreement. "That's a good
place to start. I'll give Leia a call
and see if she can give us access to the files we need. I'll get her to send a medical team here to
retrieve the body you brought back and to examine it further, just incase we
missed anything. In the meantime," Luke began, regarding each of the young Jedi
Knights present, "be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. Our mysterious assailants could very well
still be here on Yavin Four, waiting for another opportunity to strike.
"And
Zekk," Luke said, turning to face the dark-haired young man in front of him,
"get someone to help you bring your ship in. I don't want you going anywhere alone, until we get a better idea of
what we're up against,"
Luke
Skywalker did not have to worry about the mysterious assassins hanging around
the jungle moon. In fact, the moment
the group had realized they were outmatched against the kid with a lightsaber,
they had picked their injured selves up, and carried their unconscious
companion back to their ship. The
fourth member of their group, Trev, had not been so lucky. He had been foolish enough to try to sneak
up behind a Jedi, and ended up paying the price for it. They had no choice but to leave his body
behind with the Jedi.
The
remaining assailants now stood in Xander Karsay's office, explaining their
failure to their master.
Karsay
only listened with half-interest. He hadn't
really expected them to pull the scheme off in the first place. Sending a group of force blind troops to a
planet full of Jedi to kidnap someone was bound to fail. So when he sent them out of his office
without punishment after the report of their failure, the trio looked as if
they had just stared death in the face and lived to talk about it.
The
truth was, most other times failure to complete a mission occurred Karsay would
not have been so generous. But these
were good soldiers, men Karsay had known for years. They had in fact done exactly what Karsay had intended for them
to do. He had caught Zekk off guard,
and now the former dark lord was probably going out of his mind trying to
figure out how someone who was supposed to be dead was sending assailants after
him. He did not doubt that Zekk would
remember what the tattoo on his troops stood for.
The
traitor would seek him out, Karsay was sure of it. If Zekk had anything of the dark side left in him, and Karsay was
sure he did, then he would indeed come.