Su'cuy! First off, I apologize for the long wait. For those who don't know me personally, I have started taking college courses this year in addition to a regular load of high school work. So as you might guess, this is a much busier year than last year. I can't make any promises, but I will try to keep on top of the book series.

On the title: Syzygy is a real word (gasp). It's true. It can be compared to an eclipse. a Syzygy is an astronomical term meaning the conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun. It can also mean a pair of connected or corresponding things. I picked the title "Syzygy" instead of "Eclipse" for a rather obvious reason..."Syzygy" is much more unique. "Eclipse" has no doubt been the title of hundreds of books. The point of the title is to make the book stand out, and I think "Syzygy" works to this effect quite nicely.

What's the syzygy in book 6? As you might have noticed, the genre of book 6 is somewhat different than the previous books in Galactic War. Instead of being a Sci-Fi/Adventure, it is an Angst/Tragedy. Romantic themes are present in the story but not predominantly, sickeningly so - and they are of a tragic, not saccharine - nature. As you might expect from the genre label, this book is anticipated to be considerably darker than the previous stories. For those who are concerned that the change in genre label might suggest that there will be a decline in action, I assure you that there is PLENTY of action and adventure to be found. I guess this would be synonymous with George Lucas' work on the Star Wars movies, as the sixth film created (Episode III) is undoubtedly the darkest in the entire saga. The second definition of Syzygy suggests loosely that it could mean pieces to a puzzle being connected; the primary definition suggests that there is an element overshadowing, or eclipsing, a theme not yet revealed. Will this mystery theme be revealed in book 6? I stated earlier I was making no promises. But I take that back. I'll make one now.

Yes.

✶ The Chosen Race HQ, Hohepäe, 24 BBY ✶

"We place the charges on the power generator, located here," Jacen says, highlighting a large, circular room on the holomap of the fortress. "Set the dets to blow off after about, say, a ninety second countdown. We should be out of the blast radius by then."

"But the explosion will cause a chain reaction when it blows up the weapons depot, which is located within the blast radius," I point out. "The entire building will collapse on top of us within a couple minutes after the first explosion, and this complex is enormous – it'd take us about ten minutes minimum to peel out of here."

"Well," he stands and shrugs on his pack, flashing me his habitual smirk that always makes me want to bash his face in, "we'll just have to run like hell then, won't we?"

We creep through the hall till we come to a ventilation shaft. Jacen smashes it in with a Taikaido chop – he never uses his lightsaber unless he deems it necessary – and slithers into the vent. I squeeze in after him, and we crawl through the shaft for several hundred meters, moving as quietly as possible as we are acutely aware of the clunk clunk clunk of enemy soldiers dashing through the hallways underneath us. Finally, we reach the correct grate and, after another skillful chop, my Master drops into the control room. I roll to the floor after him, dodging the blast bolts from security turrets as they gyrate wildly, attempting to get a fix on us. A couple quick lightsaber swipes, and the machines are put out of their misery. My adrenaline hasn't even kicked in yet – the whole objective is just too easy. We place the dets, ditch the shaft and make a run for it in the main hall.

We nearly slam into a squad of troops making their way to the turbolifts. "Halt!" the sergeant shouts. Jacen nods and the commanding officer in addition to four of his men die instantly. Jacen breaks the neck of another, decapitates two in one stroke, and electrocutes the remainder with a flash of Force lightning. We do all of this without allowing our feet to stop in their retreat. This is too easy…

A janitor droid makes the mistake of obstructing Jacen's path. I run past a heap of charred metal that not even Jawas would care to scavenge. We come up on two squads now – we cut our way through as if we are farmers and they are weeds. Too easy, it's way too easy…

BLAM!

And now it's not all cream and sugar. It never is when my Master's around. Ninety seconds isn't enough time for even two extremely fit Jedi like us to blast out of such a gigantic complex, but there's no arguing with a redneck Jedi. Ninety seconds and we're halfway out, and I'm on the floor rolling to get the fire off my back. I don't know if he's still alive. Wait, that's definitely him, calling me the spawn of a sith harlot as he screams at me to get up and get moving. Knowing that disobedience is met with dire consequences, I am of course compelled to obey.

Except my leg is gone and I can't move.

"UP!" he shouts. UP! My brain commands my body, but my right leg isn't bending the correct way; I have two knees on one leg, how interesting…

"Kid, don't make me leave you on your own –––" he says, and now I start to cry, mostly because I don't want him to go and leave me to die here in this hellhole, but also because I'm starting to feel knife stabs in my sides.

"I'm trying! I'm TRYING!" I scream, nearly bursting my liver as I struggle up on one leg.

He's cussing now, saying all the swear words in all languages I know, and a few unfamiliar ones thrown into the mix as well. "By the Twenty Lost Jedi, girl, why the kriff don't you get going?" he shrieks. "Just go! It's not your time! Trust me, I'll be fine!"

"What are – JACEN!" I'm falling to the floor, the world around us collapsing, spinning wildly, being sucked down into a black hole, where there's nothing, nothing…except pain, the pain quite like I imagined the sort of agony one would have in childbirth. The only difference is, there's some sort of gain to be made in that kind of pain: the joy of your own child. But this, all this type of pain spawns is death…

"Adriaan." The voice is calm now; no more cussing. Very gentle and quiet now, the tone he uses when he's about to command me to do something very hard, something I'm not going to like, something I'm going to spend the next six hours arguing against. "As much as I would love to see the day Yoda cuts off your Padawan braid and initiates you as a Jedi Knight, everyone needs to leave the party at some time or another. As for me, I never did fancy dying off quietly; no, going out in a blaze of glory, taking down an entire building with me, that's the way I'd love to die. But I'm not going to force you to stay here with me. There's so much more you need to be doing out there. Do you understand?"

"I can't get up."

He sighs. "Adriaan, unless you're trapped under a mountain of rocks like I am, I don't want to hear any excuses. You must go now."

"First of all, my leg is broken," I gasp out. "Second of all, some debris punctured one of my organs. And third of all…" I pause to heave in smoke-laden oxygen. "I can't leave you!" I scream out as the pains rack my body.

"Well, you're going to!" Jacen yells, angry now. "A broken leg and punctured organ never stopped me from running when I was a Padawan! I'm so tired of hearing your lame excuses! You're the one who's constantly whining about me underestimating you. Well, this is the time when you prove to me who you were born to be! So stop being a big wuss and get out of here!"

"I'll prove to you who's the real wuss here!" I scream back, and with a great effort I get my hands underneath me and push so that my head is raised. And then I see that I had been laying next to and yelling at a pile of debris, not my Master. "Master!" I holler, doubling over in a near-seizure as a knife stabs my guts. I really should stop yelling; it can't be good for whatever is injured in there… "Master Palgwebb? Where are you?"

"Just leave!" he roars, and then I see dark, long, sinewy fingers poking out from underneath the heap of rocks. Clawing at the floor and pushing myself forward, I grab the hand and clutch it tight, and it is as if I had been thrown a lifeline, such was the comfort I found in hugging Jacen's smooth, strong hand with my own rough, calloused, barely feminine one. "You piece of chizk, you prugnuficating She-Hutt! Fierfek, if you don't get out of here in three seconds tops I'll fry you with some Force Lightning! Now I see why your mother left you on the Temple doorstep; you're just a scruffy-looking, good-for-nothing scamp weasel! I've seen bantha pies that look prettier than you, you scum of a space slug –"

Normally, any remarks about my mother – even though I never knew her, and had formed no attachments to any of my biological relatives – make me mad enough to smash the offender's face in, but I am too worried about Jacen to even care that he called me a prugnuficating She-Hutt, which is quite possibly the most offensive, unflattering thing you could ever call a female. I hold on to his hand tightly and pull as hard as I can, but Jacen seems to have gone from sixty-six kilograms to four hundred and fifty-three. A couple rocks shift and come crashing down on my bad leg, pinioning me to the floor. As the sharp shrapnel crushes my crushed leg, black water envelopes the fire encompassing my vision. An unearthly, tortured scream rips through the abysmal firmament of the world, and a small part of me is aware that the shriek came from within myself, from within my tattered guts as I lie beside my Master in our grave, breathing what little shreds of oxygen remain in our tomb.

You can leave this pain now; it does not have to be yours. All you have to do is let go, a voice whispers inside my shredded mind. Just relax and let go, and you can leave. You can escape this. Just let go.

I had still miraculously held on to my Master's hand throughout the avalanche, and I suddenly regain consciousness and with that, my somatosensory system, and the awareness of the tangibility, the corporealness, the wonderfully solidity of his hand clutched within my own is like a rope one grabs the instant one falls over the abyss. And now I have the courage to defy that soft, silky voice which was so quiet yet so deceptively irresistible – a durasteel fist disguised in a velvet glove – and say, "No" No, I will not let go; I will not give up and allow us both to die.

And then I delve deep within my self as well as opened out to my surroundings, finding within and without me the core of energy, of the living force which is the thread that bound together the fabric of the universe, a thing so powerful that was yet given the simple and uncreative name of The Force. I touch it, breathe it in, gather it in close around me, building up a wall of energy and power to protect my Master and I from the fire.

My gut wrenches and flips, and my head jerks upward, whacking my face into a boulder. As pain threads from the top of my head to the tips of my toes I feel the Force slacken within me, but I am able to catch it and hold on, like a stubborn little child grabbing at a man's long, billowy cloak. While my body screams and protests bitterly, I force my muscles to grow taut, my lungs to expand and contract as if everything is normal, and I search deep within myself for that peace, the eye in the storm that I need to be in in order to complete my task.

Up. I take on the weight of the grave mound – the weight of the dead, which no living being must bear – lift it up, releasing the crushing force of the mountain from our mangled bodies, heaving it upward, forcing the heavens to accept the burden.

Who am I? A little fourteen-year-old girl, defying physics by lifting a rock mound the size of a hill? This can't be happening; I am not capable of this. The mountain becomes very heavy, and some of the rocks spill out from my hands and smash against the floor; I feel myself being pressed down, forced to lie back down in my grave. You cannot escape death; no one can…

"It's too heavy! What do you expect me to become, a giant Phlog wrestler?" I screamed after my third failed attempt to lift a small cruiser.

"Size does not matter," Master Palgwebb answered cooly.

Size does not matter. This is no mountain; it is a mere pebble in my hand. It cannot defeat me. I close my eyes and insist that I am lifting a pebble, and I say it so forcefully and convincingly that part of me actually begins to believe it. And as the mountain is again uprooted, I feel another, stronger force joining in my efforts to rise.

I'm with you, kid, Jacen telepaths to me.

The mountain slowly dwindles to a hill, then a boulder, than a stone, then a mere pebble, until eventually it becomes nothing at all, and I slowly open my eyes to see my Master standing over my grave, holding up a stony sky as fire lashes around us.

"Adriaan, get up!" he grunts, his knees buckling. I struggle to rise, but I am firmly glued to the floor, and I can only watch helplessly as my Master's gorgeous, beautifully-muscles legs and arms begin to shake, and sweat break out across his clean face, and weariness becoming more and more the theme in his once dynamic crouching dragon posture. Even Jacen cannot hold up a mountain forever…

"Adriaan, please! Get up!" He's pleading now; is that really just sweat dripping down his face?

Some inward force within me obeys; I watch my body propel itself upwards – as if my soul is detached from my physical form – and lean heavily against a half-smashed wall. Jacen growls and shoots upright, his legs and arms straightening suddenly, like a bent sapling that had just been relieved from a heavy layer of snow. And then the dark, stony cave is gone, blown open to the pale lavender skies of the planet Hohepäe, the planet we have been stranded on for months. After a few days, the novelty of a purple firmament had worn off, and I had come to loathe the sky, but today was the first time in weeks that the sight of it made me glad. The pastel hue almost made me feel that I had a right to have hope, to have faith that today was the day Jacen and I were going to kiss Hohepäe and its pixie-like sky goodbye forever.

Today the normally blank-canvass firmament was no longer monotone, but filled with a multitude of flying creatures: flaming birds, fiery comets, vibrant glowflies…hang on, no, those were stones; debris…

"Sweet sookie –" I choke through streams of agony.

"You have about three seconds before one of those flying rocks smash you into a cute blond chick jam," Jacen says in my ear cheerfully, though his face is nearly unrecognizable, as his facial muscles are screwed up in pain as blood and perspiration trickle through the creases.

"I can't –" I begin, but there's no time for me to finish as he lunges for me and yanks on my arm, sending my face flying into his chest. He swiftly pushes me away from him and starts sprinting down the remains of the corridor. As he jerks me along, my eyes catch a glimpse of the boulder which had replaced me just seconds ago. That was my death right there…I have heard people talk about their lives flashing before their eyes in an instant; well, that was what I saw now, as that one glimpse of the rock was burned into a permanent image in my mind.

We mortals are so vulnerable, so weak that we could die at any given moment. Or perhaps are deaths are not quite so instantaneous; perhaps a more positive way of looking at it is that as soon as we are born, we begin to die. I frown as my brain processes my rumination. That wasn't as positive a thought as I had hoped. I am not surrounded by uplifting surroundings, either; flames wash over my body as I stumble after my Master, the fire waving over us as fluidly as water. Flaming debris come crashing down on top of us, and every air we breathe is a noxious fume. It looks and feels like we are in hell.

My reflections are abruptly cut short by a wave of nausea throwing me bodily to what is left of the floor. My right leg buckles up underneath me, every muscle in it screaming the leg's ultimate despair, and I know that I am no longer capable of making it obey me. The child inside me – the ageless plague known as Pain – kicks and screams wildly, threatening to make my guts burst. And deep down inside, even through all the insane agony, I realize that I am dying, that in all likelihood, I will die.

"Come on, up, up, UP!" My relentless Master drives his slave to her one good foot somehow and makes her half run, half hop as he drags her along. The sky is falling on top of us now; the lavender firmament gets closer, closer…the walls of the fortress crumble around us, and yet we are still running, running…

"Faster! Come on, faster!" Jacen screams. In an effort to obey, I accidentally set my injured leg down on the ground in the impossible hope that I can somehow use it to finish my run. But no one, not even I – and, although he will never admit it, not even Jacen – can run on a broken leg.

The ground becomes knives and stabs upward through the soles of my feet to the core of my being. My body careens around, my gut is being forced through my esophagus, and I see a stream of dark blood spewing from my broken lips and staining my hands, the ground, Jacen's shirt, his arms, his hand…

The blood keeps coming, and my hands reach up to choke the stream, and in doing so, I let go of him.

I let go. And then I fall.

The ground lurches before my face for the final time.

And then I am swept off my feet; the angels are bearing me aloft. My death must have been quiet, swift, instantaneous. How come I do not remember it? And how strange angels are; why, this one looks quite familiar, at least, the arms and hands do…strong, sinewy, long arms, with lean, strong, large hands to match. In life I saw those hands often; either raised in a closed fist to strike me, or – and this was less often, unfortunately – resting comfortingly and lovingly on my shoulder. They were hands that were incredibly smooth except for the long, ridged callous on the palms, but then, all lightsaber-practitioners carry those scars…

"Jace –" I only get the first syllable out before more black fluid clogs my voice.

His face is very close to mine; he somehow picked me up in mid-run, and my arms somehow found their way around his neck. My head is cradled in the space between his shoulder and his chin, and such precious space becomes stained from the black fountain of bile that will not stop spilling from my mouth. His shirt becomes wet and sticky from the fluid, and still the vomit keeps coming. I attempt to tilt my head to the side so that I won't spill any more bile on my savior, but he jogs my head roughly back against his neck and growls, "Be still!"

So I lie in his arms miserably, hating my own weakness, trying in vain to stop the flow of blood from my lips. Someone whimpers in my ear, and at first I think it is Jacen on account of the bile – but no, he doesn't seem to mind; I don't think he even notices – but then I realize that it is me.

And I can tell from the gait of his walk that we aren't going to get very far.

"Jacen, you have to let me go," I plead, "better one of us die than both of us. Please. I'm killing you."

"Can't talk. Must run," he pants.

"But that's what you told me to do earlier! You told me to leave you! Why would you command me to do something you don't have the guts to do yourself?" I demand through the constant stream of blood.

"Yes, I told you, and as you can see, you didn't listen. You disobeyed me; I'm merely returning the disrespect." He leaps wildly to the side, and I feel a hot rush of air whistle past my cheek as a flaming boulder smashes where we were nanoseconds earlier. The building seems to have collapsed completely; I can feel the wind whipping through my wet, ragged tunic, threatening to tear me from my Master's grasp. We are outside.

Jacen suddenly pauses, his chest heaving against my body. I dare to look out.

And I cover my eyes almost as soon as they see the yawning abyss before Jacen's feet.

"Master, please, no –"

"This building was built on an ocean cliffside, remember?" he wheezes.

"Master, we can't…your phobia of heights –"

"Can't help it now," he says grimly, his voice shaking. I press my face against his damp tunic and muffle my scream as I feel his feet leave the ground and catapult our bodies over the cliff.

And then we fall. Falling through a terrifying bliss, freedom that is so empty it's frightening. Emptiness that is so palpable Jacen feels like the whispers of a mere daydream, a memory long faded and forgotten…

And who knew water felt like a slab of duracrete when one plunged into it after a ten kilometer drop…