Chapter
20

Oh dear,” Threepio said point four seconds after he broke the Imperial code. He had hoped to engage Chewbacca in an extended conversation, describe exactly how he had reasoned out the more subtle nuances of the code, but realized that all of this would have to wait. “Zsinj has learned from monitoring radio broadcasts that General Solo is here onplanet,” Threepio hastened to explain, “and Gethzerion has negotiated to sell Han to Zsinj’s men. She says she found the skid marks showing where the sisters of the Singing Mountain clan towed the Millennium Falcon, so she anticipates that Han will come to the city looking for spare parts. She has set a trap for General Solo!”

Chewbacca growled, shaking his bowcaster in the air.

“We must warn them!” Threepio shouted, and Artoo emitted a burst of static, squealing his agreement.

A whistle blew over the prison’s intercom, and in the plasteel corridors a jet black droid wheeled along, shining its artificial eyes to the right and left. It had a small hand blaster of the kind that could injure but not kill built into its helmet, and as it wheeled down the hallway, it shouted, “Count! Count! Count!” The inmates scattered, trying to stay out of the blaster’s path, but the droid nailed two men who weren’t fast enough to make it to their cells, and the hapless prisoners screamed in pain.

Han and Isolder followed it down the corridor, dressed in their stormtrooper attire. Leia and Teneniel followed close behind, disguised as witches. Luke followed last, slow with fatigue. Teneniel took his hand, urged him to walk close behind. Still, Luke stretched his senses to the maximum. They were getting closer to the witches’ tower. He could feel them there, ahead. The prison corridors seemed strangely quiet, lacking guards. The prisoners had been locked in their cells for the night.

The guard droid let them pass without comment, and they walked through the empty halls, footsteps ringing against the plasteel. As they passed a side hallway that led between tiers of cells, Leia paused.

“Wait a minute …” she whispered, peering into the first cell. “I know that woman! She’s from Alderaan! She served as senior weapons technologies adviser to my father.”

“Keep moving,” Luke said softly. “We can do nothing for her at the moment.”

“But she’s supposed to be dead!” Leia said. “Her ship was found crashed.”

“Move along,” Luke said softly.

They came to a sealed door with an electronic lock beside it. Through a window in the door they could see a second door. Han looked at the number pad for the electronic lock, pushed in a four-digit sequence at random. A red light flashed above the pad, indicating that he’d hit the wrong combination.

“Don’t!” Luke said. “Let me see if I can get it.” He walked to the pad, put his hand on it, closed his eyes in concentration. Dozens of guards used the pad daily. He could sense which four keys they pressed, but did not know the precise order. Hesitantly, he pressed the four numbers in the order he hoped would be correct. A green light flashed at the top of the pad, then the door swung open.

Luke pressed a button to open the next door. It led to a tiny elevator. When the others stepped into the tiny room, Teneniel stood staring at them a moment, frowning.

“Come on,” Luke said. “It’s an elevator. It will take us up to the walkway that leads to the tower.” Teneniel blushed and hurried in.

When the elevator reached the top, the door opened into a glass causeway that spanned over the dark prison walls. The glass was so clear, so perfect, that Luke could see stars above him. Down outside the towers was a work yard, a few metal shacks, some Nightsisters walking under brilliant electric lights.

And a smothering sensation hit Luke. He could feel Nightsisters near, just ahead in the towers. Isolder and Han took the lead, headed over the causeway, but Teneniel stood rooted in terror.

“It’s all right,” Luke whispered. “Let the inner calm come to you. Draw your strength from the Force, let it wrap around you like a cloak. We have to get past them, if we’re going to get to their shipyard. The Force can hide you from her.”

At the far side of the causeway, a door opened. Four Nightsisters in black robes, their cowls down low, walked toward them. The one in the lead walked with stiff legs, slowly, hands clasped over her belly. Luke breathed deeply, slowly, and let the Force flow through him.

The others walked ahead, and Teneniel heaved her legs forward, woodenly. The Nightsisters passed in the narrow corridor, and one woman’s black skirts slapped against Teneniel’s. And then they were past.

The Nightsisters stopped, and Luke could feel Teneniel’s fear, could feel how she wanted to run.

“Halt! You there!” a Nightsister shouted at their backs, her voice dry and crackling like rotted leather. As one the group stopped. The Nightsister demanded, “What were you doing so late at the prison?”

Han turned, answered through his helmet microphone. “Trouble in cell block C.”

The Nightsister nodded her head thoughtfully, began to turn away, but looked back at them. “What trouble? Why wasn’t I notified?”

“A minor scuffle between inmates,” Han said. “We did not wish to disturb you.”

The Nightsister pulled her hood back, and in the brilliant lights, Luke was struck with horror. Her white hair was unkempt and matted. Her bloodshot eyes were a vivid crimson. But most horrible was her face—a purplish monstrosity from ruptured blood vessels, gray and dead in the cheekbones.

“I feel your fear,” the Nightsister said. “What would a Nightsister have to fear here—in our domain?”

“With so many guards gone, there are rumors of an impending riot,” Han said, stepping forward, inserting himself between Teneniel and the Nightsisters. “I’m afraid there may be some truth to those rumors.”

The Nightsister nodded thoughtfully. Luke could feel her trying to probe them, and he almost pulled his blaster. Instead, he channeled the Force, let it flow into the witch, quiet her suspicions. “I will pay a visit to block C. My presence should cow the rabble,” she said. “Thank you for alerting me.”

Han nodded, and the Nightsister turned, pulled up her hood and proceeded to the elevator.

Han led the way into the glass tower. He opened a door and marched them through some kind of common room.

A dozen Nightsisters dressed in black robes lounged on plush couches in a circle, engrossed in the spectacle of watching ghostly floating images of beautiful men and women. The Nightsisters sat snacking on exotic foods, and did not even seem to notice them pass.

Han led them to an elevator, and as the door closed, Teneniel nearly collapsed. “The Nightsister we passed,” she said. “That was Gethzerion. I was sure she’d recognize me.” She swallowed a deep breath.

Luke stood looking at the elevator door, and suddenly he felt as if he were very high in the air, looking down at Dathomir below, and all of it was black. All of it was frozen. Every bit of it. Everyone, everything was dead. He closed his eyes, tried to rest for a moment, thinking that perhaps his fatigue was affecting his vision, but the blackness remained, and a tremendous sense of despair and urgency filled him. He stared into the blackness, knowing it for what it was: A vision of the future.

“What?” Leia said, turning to Luke. “What is it?”

“We can’t leave here,” Luke said, the words feeling dry in his mouth. “We can’t leave this world yet—not this way.”

“What do you mean?” Isolder asked, and Han said, “Yeah, what do you mean? We’ve got to leave!”

“No,” Luke said, staring away. He pulled off his helmet, gasped for breath. “No, we can’t. Everything here is so wrong. There’s so much darkness.” He could feel the darkness coming, the cold, seeping into every fiber of his muscles.

“Look,” Han said. “We’re going to get some spare parts for the Falcon, then the whole bunch of us are going to fly our tails back to safety. As soon as we get back to Coruscant, we can send a fleet in, you can command a million troops—whatever it takes!”

“No,” Luke said with certainty. “We can’t go.” He was frightened. But he had no plans. He couldn’t go back up to the Nightsisters and attack them. They couldn’t afford a confrontation now.

“Listen to Han,” Isolder said. “These people have been trapped here for years! They don’t need us to martyr ourselves for them tonight. They’ll last until we can get back to rescue them.”

A pale light of certainty seemed to flash through Luke, and the Jedi turned to Isolder, glanced quickly at all of them. “No, they can’t. Watch, and you’ll see. Believe me, the powers of darkness are gathering rapidly. Isolder, you said your fleet will be arriving in six days. But if we don’t stop it before then, this planet will be destroyed!”

Han shook his head doubtfully. “Listen, kid,” he said. “Don’t go getting all crazy on me. I know you’re under a lot of pressure. You’ve got a few problems now—and I really do sympathize—but if you keep talking like that and scaring these folks, I’m going to have to bust you in the chops.”

Luke could feel Han’s nervousness. He didn’t want Luke upsetting the others. Perhaps rightfully so. The elevator jarred as it hit bottom, and Luke hit a keyplate. The doors hissed open, but Luke still had his back to the door. “Go ahead, Han,” Luke said, gesturing at the immense storage chamber behind him without bothering to turn around. “Here is what you want.”

Luke turned to see three dozen damaged ships—three nearly demolished Imperial lift-wing carriers, a dozen TIE fighters melted halfway down to slag, parts of broken hover cars. Han surveyed the damaged vehicles, and gasped. In the center of the junkyard, with footlights shining under them, sat a nearly completed TIE fighter and a stock light freighter that looked almost exactly like the Millennium Falcon. Most of the forward sensor forks were painted rust-orange, while the hull was a faded olive and the rear drives were an old space-pirate blue. Weld marks showed where parts of three ships had been cobbled together.

“They’ve almost got themselves a ship!” Han said, pulling off his helmet to get a better look. “It looks like all they need is a few more cells for the sublight drives.”

“We couldn’t be that lucky,” Leia said.

“Hey, these old Corellian stock light freighters were some of the most popular in the galaxy in their day,” Han said. “And you still can’t find a ship that’s more durable.”

Isolder pulled off his helmet, took a deep breath of the fresh air. “More overweight and clunky, you mean.”

“Same thing,” Han said.

Han headed down a shallow ramp toward the ship, and Leia said, “Wait!”

Han stopped, and Leia studied the shipyard suspiciously. “These are pretty valuable pieces of equipment,” she said. “They’re here underground, lighted. Don’t you think it’s odd that they aren’t guarded?”

“Who needs guards?” Han asked. “These ships won’t fly. Besides, you saw the stormtroopers marching off. The place is a little understaffed tonight.”

“What about alarms?” Luke asked. He picked up his macrobinoculars, scanned the room, adjusted the dials. “I don’t see any laser alarms, but this place could be rigged with anything—motion detectors, magnetic field imagers—and in this junk pile, we wouldn’t even know where to begin looking.”

“So what do you want us to do,” Han asked, “just stand here? We’ve got to check this ship out.”

“Come on,” Leia said, touching Luke’s shoulder. “He’s right.”

Han and the group crept forward, scanning the ground, the surrounding junk piles. The Corellian freighter’s hatch doors were closed, and Han stopped a moment, studying the access keypad. “If I were going to guard this ship, the place where I’d put the alarm is right here,” Han said. “If someone punches in the wrong sequence, bzzzt. The alarm goes off.”

“What’s the right sequence?” Teneniel asked. Luke placed his hand over the keypad, but no one had touched it in a long time. He couldn’t feel the sequence.

“I don’t know,” Han said, studying the characters. “Every captain has his or her own code. But of course the port authorities have overrides, depending on what systems you’re registered in. Here are the licenses.” He pointed out a column of characters. Some of the alien scripts were tiny, delicately curved. Others were in pictographs, while still others were blockish and bold with crude knife shapes, as if they’d been designed by some warrior race. “Whoever ran this ship did a lot of traveling in the Chokan, Viridia, and Zi’Dek systems. I used to know some of those port access codes back in the days of the Old Republic, but this character was running for the Imperials. They changed all of the codes. Damn, I wish I’d done more pirating.”

Isolder stepped up to the ship, punched in the code fifteen-zero-three-eleven. The hatch swung down. “Chokan Imperial port authority code,” Isolder said, smiling.

Han looked at him, astonished. “You worked the Chokan system? Even with that nasty plague?”

Isolder shrugged. “I knew a girl there.”

“Must have been some girl,” Leia said.

Han hurried up into the ship. “I’ll go run diagnostics and make sure these parts are worth stealing. Isolder, you and Leia find some wrenches and get the sensor array window off, then go down in the hold and start pulling the AC generators off their mounts. Luke, run get a couple of barrels so we can drain the coolant.”

As the others went inside, Luke stood with Teneniel a second, patted her on the shoulder, his face tense. “This is going to take some time,” Luke said. “Keep your eyes open.”

Leia and Isolder got some tools out of the ship, and pulled off the sensory array window. Luke went to a far wall where huge metal containers were stored, rolled a barrel across the room. Teneniel whispered some spells to sharpen her senses, but found that it did no good. Somehow, subconsciously, she had already tapped into the Force. With her heightened senses, she could hear every thudding movement and clank of tool, Han’s excited delight from the cockpit as he whispered, “Jackpot!” the echoing pings as Luke rolled the barrel over the floor, crunching bits of sand and dirt. Luke went inside the freighter, grunting as he worked a hand pump to transfer the coolant to the barrel. Leia and Isolder carried their window inside and fired up some torches to cut through frozen bolts. The flames hissed and squealed as they cut through the metal.

Teneniel walked away from the ship so that she could hear better, wished she had a blaster rifle if only to make her feel more comfortable, better armed. There were so many scrapped spaceships in the room that she felt as if she were in a rocky cave. She really couldn’t see much from the floor.

She decided to climb up the side of a transport that was more molten slag than it was ship. She went to it, looked for a handhold. The tang of oxidizing metal bit into her nostrils. She found a knobby lump, grabbed it and began pulling herself up, but could have sworn she heard the swishing of skirts, a mumbled word.

She glanced around the room, lit only by the footlights at the base of the two partly repaired ships. There were a lot of deep shadows. The high ceilings mildly echoed the thumps of Han and the others as they worked. Teneniel quickly and quietly hurried to the top of the ship, sat looking over the junkyard. From here she could see everything—the storage area, the elevators, a door that opened to a stairway on the south wall. At the far north end of the room a rectangular opening led outside. The opening was silvered by moonlight. The darkness, the creepy feel of the place, the muted echoes, the mouth leading outside. All of it came crushing in on Teneniel. It was so much like the warriors’ hall she’d entered as a child when her mother died.

She felt that same suffocation here, the same yawning emptiness. She looked off into the shadows at a far corner of the room—thought she glimpsed movement, dark shapes running in the shadows. She stared at the place but could see nothing.

She began chanting softly, a spell of detection, and a bolt of cold fear pierced her. She could feel them there—in the darkness, closing in with deadly intent.

Teneniel scanned the room, searching vainly. Something was wrong with her sight. She could feel a cool pressure over her eyes, a stuffiness in her ears, and she tried wiping it away with her hands.

Suddenly her vision cleared. Baritha stood at the foot of her pile of rubble, with three other Nightsisters at her side. One of the women chanted softly, and she held her thumb and forefinger out, pinching them together.

Invisible fingers seized Teneniel’s throat, choking her.

“Welcome, Sister Teneniel,” Baritha said. “So, we set a trap, and look who has fallen into it! What happened, did you finally tire of hiding in the mountains?”

Teneniel gasped for breath, found herself struggling. Her ears thudded and rang; her lungs burned. She tried to sing a counterspell, but could get no air.

“Too bad I cannot let you live another moment,” Baritha said. “I’m sure that Gethzerion would have enjoyed tormenting you!”

She gave a hand signal, and the Nightsister at her side sang louder. She balled her purpled hand into a fist. Teneniel felt her windpipe wrench terribly, and Luke’s words rang through her ears. “Let the Force flow through you.”

There were no spells she could sing, no chants, not even a funeral dirge. The Nightsisters thought her powerless. Teneniel tried to calm herself, let the Force flow through her, open her throat. The pile of slag on which she stood seemed to twist and buck beneath her like a frightened rancor, and Teneniel dropped to her hands and knees. The Force was not there, nowhere to be found. Her heart pounded wildly with terror, and with all her will she tried to shriek for help before she died.

The world twisted, and she dropped into the dark void, swallowed by blackness like her mother before her.

Luke heard Teneniel’s scream in his mind, shouted for Han, and ran down the gangplank.

He saw the Nightsisters huddled in their robes a hundred meters from the ship, Teneniel lying in a heap on the carrier above them. “Stop!” Luke shouted. “Let her go!”

He let the Force surge through him, opened Teneniel’s trachea. The girl gasped for breath.

“What?” Baritha asked. “A puny little man seeks to command us?” The witches turned toward him.

“Leave this place!” Luke said. “I warn you: Tell Gethzerion to take the Nightsisters away and set your slaves free!”

“Or what, offworlder?” Baritha said. “Or you’ll bleed all over us when we pop your head open? Has your stay on our world been so short that you don’t know what we are?”

“I know what you are,” Luke said. “I’ve battled your kind on other worlds.”

One of the Nightsisters grabbed Baritha’s arm, a warning gesture. Behind Baritha, two of the Nightsisters began to sing softly in harmony, and their images faded. Luke let the Force flow through him, realized they were trying to alter his perceptions.

“You cannot hide yourselves from me,” Luke said. “No matter where you run, I would hunt you down. Your only chance to live is to leave now, peaceably.”

“You lie!” Baritha shouted, throwing back her hood. At the top of her voice she began yelling her spell, “Artha, artha!”

Luke pulled his blaster and fired. Baritha cut short her spell. She reached out with a gesture and slapped the blaster bolt away.

“You are no spellcaster!” Baritha shouted, and one of the Nightsisters rushed toward him. Luke pulled out his lightsaber, flipped it on and threw it, so that it tumbled end over end. The Nightsister grabbed for the handle, and Luke used the Force to twist the lightsaber in mid-air, killing the hag. He called the lightsaber back to his hand.

Baritha and the Nightsisters drew back a pace. One of the women shouted, “Gethzerion, sisters—come to us!” And Luke knew that she was summoning reinforcements.

Teneniel lurched from the top of the wreck, took a flying leap toward Luke.

“No!” Baritha shouted, and she began chanting her spell again. A solar panel broke free from a TIE fighter, went spinning toward Teneniel, caught her in the back and knocked her to her belly. She slid next to Luke’s feet, but rose to her knees. Baritha chanted her spell and another solar panel flew across the room.

Teneniel ducked beneath it and glared at the old woman. “You really don’t want to try this with me!” Teneniel warned viciously. Behind them, the engines to the freighter roared to life, and Luke had to question the sanity of trying to fly the thing with over half its sublight drive cells missing while overhead the Star Destroyers were poised to blow any outgoing craft from the sky. But at the moment, he really didn’t feel like arguing.

A sensor array broke free from the TIE fighter, went swirling toward Teneniel. Luke shouted, “Come on!”

But the girl stood her ground, began singing a counterattack. The computer array twisted in the air, hurtled toward the Nightsisters. Baritha jumped aside to dodge hardware, but one Nightsister got hit and went flying to the ground.

“Damn you, Gethzerion!” Teneniel shouted to the air. “I’m sick of the way you hunt us. I’m sick of trying to stay out of your path! I’m sick of the way you hurt and kill. I’m sick—” Luke looked at Teneniel’s face, realized that she was enraged, mad beyond reason. He could feel the force of her wrath. Her face was red and tears streamed from her eyes. Teneniel began muttering her song, and a hurricane blew through the room. A TIE fighter flipped over under the force of the onslaught, tumbled toward the Nightsisters. The witches ducked and raised their hands, gesturing a warding spell.

“No! Don’t give in to anger!” Luke shouted, grabbing Teneniel’s shoulder. “That’s not Gethzerion! That’s not her!”

Teneniel turned, looked in his face, gasping for breath, and suddenly seemed to realize where she was. Han fired the freighter’s forward blasters into a heap of slag, throwing shrapnel and creating a cloud of smoke and ionized gases that blew toward the Nightsisters like a storm.

Luke grabbed Teneniel’s hand, pulled her up the gangplank and hit the close switch, rushed to the cockpit. Han was there alone. Luke could not hear the witches singing any longer, but through the view-screen he saw them, fists outstretched in a gripping gesture. Han slowly pulled the thruster stick, trying to raise the ship.

“Man, these drives are in worse shape than I thought,” he said doubtfully. “I don’t think this bucket can even lift off.”

At the far side of the room, figures in black robes flowed from a doorway. Luke said, “Get us out of here—now!”

Han struggled to lift the stick. “This throttle is stuck!” he shouted, grasping it with both hands. Luke looked at the witches with their gripping gesture, channeled the Force through him, then reached down and pulled the throttle up easily. The ship rattled and rose, and Luke spun it around, threw the sublights on full power as they surged toward the portal on the far side of the building.

The witches behind were caught in the flash of tailfire as the thrusters ignited. The ship burst out of the building, and the freighter shuddered and rolled to the sound of blaster fire.

“Don’t worry,” Han said. “It’s just the sentries on the prison towers. The shields can hold them.” Han took the throttle, and they rumbled over the plains. The freighter was sluggish, definitely sluggish.

Han shouted over the intercom. “Hey, Your Highnesses, have you about got those generators loose?”

“Negative,” Isolder said over the intercom. “Give us a few more minutes.”

“Might I remind you that this is an interdicted planet?” Han said. “And we have a sky full of Imperial destroyers above us who are no doubt arming missiles at this very moment in hopes of blasting us to pieces.”

“Affirmative,” Isolder said. “We’re working on it!”

“I don’t want you to work on it,” Han said. “I want you to get those generators out of there—now!”

“I’ll go help,” Luke said, and he hurried down the corridor. Teneniel was still standing by the hatch, looking at the door. Her face was pale. She glanced away guiltily.

“I’m sorry,” she told Luke. “I won’t let it happen again.”

Luke nodded, crawled down into the hold, up into a snug corner of the right sensor array fork. Isolder had already unbolted two generators from the mounts, and he had a huge wrench and tried vainly to loosen another bolt. Leia was pulling on the generators, trying to squeeze them past Isolder’s body.

“Pull those generators out of the way if you can,” Luke urged Isolder, firing up his lightsaber. “Leia, get up there and cap the coolant.” Luke slashed the heads off the remaining six bolts, then gave the last two generators a good kick. Both of them tumbled off the mounts. He and Isolder dragged the generators up to the main deck. They worked desperately to wrestle them onto the hatch gate, and just as they got the last one up, Leia finished capping the barrels of coolant. They dragged all the coolant to the hatch at once.

“Evacuate ship!” Han called over the intercom.

He had hardly said the words when he ran out from the cockpit. “We’ll be flying over a lake in about thirty seconds. I saw it on my screens!”

Han hit the open latch on the hatch, and as the entry ramp dropped away, the coolant and generators went spilling out. Luke was surprised to see that they were only traveling five meters above ground at perhaps sixty kilometers per hour.

A blast rocked the ship, and Han looked up. “Those Star Destroyers know we’re here. Let’s hope the shields can hold for thirty seconds.”

A sudden barrage sent the ship bouncing, and Isolder grabbed the sensory array window and slipped down the ramp. He caught himself halfway, dropped the window, tried crawling back. A second barrage rocked the ship, sent him sliding farther.

Leia screamed, grabbed his hand. Moon-silvered water flashed beneath them, and Luke grabbed Teneniel’s hand and pulled her from the ship. All five of them dropped together.

Luke plunged into the water, and his feet hit mud. He bobbed back up to the surface, looked around desperately for the others. Teneniel came up beside him, Han and Leia twenty yards away. Beyond them, Isolder floated up on his back.

Leia swam for Isolder. Luke looked out at the ship, flying over the lake. After several more missile hits, the shields died, and the ship exploded in a green fireball that mushroomed up into the night.

Luke swam to Leia and Isolder, found Isolder’s face muddy. He’d hit the shallows and was coughing dirty water. “He’s lucky he didn’t snap his neck,” Leia said.

Luke touched him, felt life still strong in him. “He’ll be all right.”

They walked a hundred yards through the shallows, lay down on the beach. Luke could feel a tremor in the Force, like a thin probing finger of thought, Gethzerion stretching out with her mind, trying to find them. They were less than ten kilometers from the city, in fairly clear view, and the Nightsisters had surely seen the ship blow up, but Gethzerion was using the Force to search for survivors. Luke cleared his mind, let Gethzerion’s touch wander past him. He looked at Teneniel, saw her struggling for control. She suddenly relaxed, and Luke felt that the danger was over, at least temporarily. The probing touch moved out farther over the lake.

“Well,” Leia panted. “That wasn’t so hard!”

“Yeah,” Isolder agreed, still coughing. “Maybe we should go back, try it again.”

“We need to hurry and get out of here,” Luke said. “Gethzerion will be sending stormtroopers to look for survivors and see if she can salvage the wreck. I don’t want them to find anything but our tracks.”

Luke’s words seemed to sober the entire group. Luke tried to catch his breath.

“Luke, let me see your macrobinoculars,” Han said. Luke reached down to his waterproof pouch, pulled out the macrobinoculars. Han lay panting, looking up into the sky.

“What? What’s up there?” Isolder asked.

“I don’t know,” Han said. “I saw it as we flew out. Something funny on the sensors.”

“What?” Leia asked.

“Satellites,” Han said, “Zsinj’s men have released thousands of satellites overhead.”

“Like what?” Isolder asked. “Orbital mines?”

“Maybe,” Han said. “Probably. Whatever they are, there’s a lot of them.”

Leia looked up at the sky, searching among the stars. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Luke followed her gaze. He could see the satellites, thousands of dim stars, as if the number of stars in the sky had doubled within the past few hours. He thought back, realized that the satellites must have been released near the same time he had his vision in the elevator. He closed his eyes, saw the vision again—eternal night.