CHAPTER
FOUR
A
bleary-eyed Jacen walked into the Jedi Academy's communication room early the
next morning to find Jaina, Anakin, and Zekk already there. Anakin and Jaina were at one computer
terminal, while Zekk was staring intently at another screen. They looked like they had been up since
dawn.
Jacen had been unable to sleep
either. He kept waking up almost every
hour, and finally decided at 6:30am to get up. He had walked by his sister's room and found she was up already. It had not taken him very long to figure out
where she might be.
"Morning, Jacen," Jaina greeted him as
he walked in.
"Have you found anything?" He asked, flopping down into a cushioned
chair.
"Not yet," Zekk answered without
looking up from the screen.
"Mom cleared us access to the entire
databank on Courscant earlier this morning," Anakin told his older brother, "If
that tattoo is on record somewhere then we'll find it,"
Jacen tried unsuccessfully to suppress
a yawn.
"Rough night?" Jaina said to him,
noticing the dark circles under her twin's eyes.
"Just some trouble sleeping, that's
all," then quickly changing the subject said, "do you need any help?"
"Well," Zekk began, rubbing his eyes,
"if you want to check over some of these files we haven't gone through yet,
you're welcome to it. I need a
break. I can't see straight I've been
staring at this screen so long."
Jacen relieved Zekk from his computer
terminal, and began the tedious search of checking through the archives of
information that his mother had sent them. Fondor was the next planet on the list, so Jacen started his search
there.
Fondor: industrial planet; population: approximately one billion; tourist
attractions: the shipyards where Darth Vader's personal flagship, Executor,
was built….
After only an hour of staring at the
different images and information on the screen in front of him, Jacen felt his
mind begin to wander. He was onto his
sixth planet, Dundas, some place that he had never heard of before, when Tenal
Ka entered the room.
"Greetings, friends," Tenal Ka
acknowledged them. She was wide-awake,
her skin still glistening from her morning run through Yavin's jungles.
"Has there been any success in your
search?"
"No, not really. Snakes seem to be native to just about every
planet in the galaxy. And none of them
even give a hint that our mysterious symbol belongs there," Jaina replied
glumly.
"We could use your help, Tenal Ka,"
said Jacen.
"Of course," the warrior girl
responded.
She walked over to his terminal,
standing rigidly and silently behind Jacen, looking over his shoulder as he
scrolled through the information on the screen.
Jacen knew Tenal Ka was not one to
talk unnecessarily, but she had barely spoken a whole sentence to him since she
had been back. He wondered briefly if
maybe she was angry with him, but then could not think of a single thing he had
done to make her upset. She had seemed
perfectly fine when he had spoken to her over the holonet.
Losing interest in the screen in front
of him, Jacen continued scrolling through the information on Dundas without
really paying any attention to it. Lucky for him though, Tenal Ka was.
She placed a firm hand on his
shoulder. "Jacen, stop,"
He did as he was told, not knowing
what had caught Tenal Ka's attention until he read what was on the screen in
front of him:
A large problem on Dundas for the
last decade or so has been the rising number of gangs in the cities. Some of the more notorious ones include
Vader's Children, Idiot's Array, and Snake Eyes.
Tenal Ka
folded her arms over her chest in silent triumph. "Ah," she said, "aha,"
"What did you find?" Zekk asked, as him and the rest of the young
Jedi Knights crowded around her.
"I believe this to be our best lead so
far," she said pointing to the part about gangs on the screen.
Jaina looked doubtful. "Why would a gang be after Zekk? Especially one all the way in the Outer Rim
Territories."
Tenal Ka shrugged. "We should not dismiss the possibility,"
"Snake Eyes?" Anakin said, mulling
over the idea in his head, "it sounds right somehow,"
"What do you think, Zekk?" Jacen said
to his friend.
Zekk didn't answer. All the colour had drained from his face,
and he looked like he was caught in some painful memory from his past.
Jaina touched his arm concerned. "Zekk, what is it? You look like you've just seen a ghost,"
He had. One from his horrible past as a Dark Jedi that he had spent so
much time trying to forget. But how
can that be? He's dead, Zekk
thought silently.
"Zekk, snap out of it!" Jaina said, waving a hand in front of his
face in an effort to bring him back to reality.
He shook his head, trying to clear
it. "What?" He snapped.
Jaina took a step back at his
outburst.
"Sorry," he apologized, and then he
cleared his throat, "Tenal Ka's right, though,"
"Are you sure?" Jacen asked, skeptically. Just because this was the first, real
connection to the mysterious marking they had found did not necessarily mean it
was the right one.
Zekk's response was immediate. "Yes, I remember where I've seen that tattoo
before,"
"You've been to Dundas? I've never even heard of it 'til now," said
Anakin.
Zekk got that distant look on his face
again. "Yeah, once, but that was a long
time ago," he said quietly.
Jaina blinked. She wondered why Zekk had never mentioned to
her that he had visited this place before. "It sounds like a wonderful place to visit," she remarked dryly, reading
through what little information the computer had on Dundas, "so what are we
waiting for? If we leave soon, we
should arrive at Dundas sometime this evening,"
Zekk had no doubt that on Dundas they would find the reason behind his attempted kidnapping that night out on the landing field. He just wasn't sure if he was up to reliving that part of his past.