Title: There Are No Gods
Author: LadyElaine
Disclaimer: The characters and situations of Star Wars belong to George Lucas and Lucasfilm, Ltd.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The Rebel Dream has liberated an occupied planet. Leia discovers the full extent of Yuuzhan Vong cruelty.
Archive: Ask first.
Feedback: Comments are appreciated; constructive criticism is adored. dragonlady75069@attbi.com
"Blessed art Thou, Eternal, Master of the Universe, Who chose us from among the races to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end in the crematory. Praised be Thy Holy Name, Thou Who Hast chosen us to be butchered on Thine Altar." --adapted from Night, by Elie Wiesel
There Are No Gods
Leia stared with increasing unease at Tikvah, the small, unremarkable planet the Rebel Dream orbited.
"Something's not right here," she muttered, more to herself than to Han, who stood by the viewport next to her.
"There's still two flights of X-Wings on patrol, Leia," he answered reassuringly. "There ain't nothing else moving out there but a cloud of yorik coral dust. We won here."
She didn't answer him, turning instead into the corridor that would take her to the infirmary. She hurried in, finding Cilghal at her usual post. The Calamari Jedi looked up questioningly from her datapad.
"Get all your people together," Leia said. "Food and medicine are the top priorities."
"Have you had some sort of word, then?" Cilghal asked.
"No. Just... a feeling."
That was enough for the Jedi medic, though. Within moments, the infirmary was filled with coordinated chaos, with Cilghal at the heart of it, conducting an orchestra of droids, medical devices, and foodstuffs.
* * *
The sky, when the shuttle landed, was ominously clouded. It didn't smell like rain, though. More like...
"Soot," Cilghal commented. "Something's been burning. Something big, to produce so much of this." She bent down briefly, and when she straightened up, the tips of her golden fingers were layered with a dark gray, oily residue.
Leia stopped; she'd thought the sootiness was simply the color of the native soil. She swallowed hard against a sudden, unreasoning nausea. "Did they burn one of the cities?"
"Hard to tell," Cilghal replied, looking around the ruined landscape. The Yuuzhan Vong invaders hadn't taken the time--or hadn't had the time--to shape the biosphere to fit their tastes, growing only a few living camps here and there. Instead, the native dwellings sparsely strewn through this rural area had simply been razed. But the scattered, blackened skeletons of these houses weren't enough to account for the layer of ash. "Your feeling," Cilghal murmured to Leia, too softly for the other medics to hear, "I'm beginning to share it. Perhaps you should return to the Dream--help General Solo with relief coordination."
Leia shot the Calamari woman a sharp glance. "I've heard the rumors, too, Cilghal, but you can't be listening to every stray tale a refugee comes up with. And I've worked with more than enough war victims to know that all the helping hands we can scare up are going to be needed here, mine included. Now, let's go."
The nearest Yuuzhan Vong encampment was only a short distance away. They'd landed on the outskirts, in case there were enemy units still lying in wait here. The susurration of the small team's footsteps raised chills on Leia's skin, giving an extra bite to the cold air. Normally reassuring, the weight of her lightsaber swinging from her belt gave no comfort now.
The silence was suffocating.
Thorn-ridden, bushy vines surrounded the camp. When one of Cilghal's team came too close, a tendril lashed out malevolently; the young man was left with a stinging welt and a healthy respect for the plant. The group had to walk for some time around the barrier before they found an entrance. It was unwatched.
An almost tangible pall of despair hung over the area. Horror abruptly twisted in Leia's gut, and her hand flew to her lightsaber. "Be on your guard," she whispered to the others. Lightsabers and blasters drawn, the small team spread out across the compound.
Cilghal crept close to Leia. "Can you sense it?" the Jedi medic murmured. "The dark side is so strong here, stronger than I've ever felt it."
Leia nodded distractedly, surveying the things the Yuuzhan Vong had used for buildings. Each was some sort of enormous, sluglike creature. As she approached the nearest building-creature, one of several rudimentary eyes blinked mindlessly at her. Countless tiny legs were rooted in the ground; the oversized mouth served as a doorway. When Leia was close enough to almost gag at its stench, she reached out and stroked the huge jaw.
Wickedly pointed teeth covered the inner surface of the jaw, but as it descended like an ancient castle's drawbridge, the teeth retracted smoothly. Still gripping her lightsaber for dear life, she tried to peer through the murk inside. Cilghal stepped up with a small handlamp and shone it into the blackness.
Leia had to grab onto the edge of the doorway as her knees threatened to buckle.
"Call the shuttle," she shot out. "We've got to figure out how to cure these people of whatever the Yuuzhan Vong have done to them, as quickly as possible."
The men, women, and children laid out on the cots--formed by the ribs of the beast--sat up slowly. One or two of them staggered toward her, squinting in the sudden light as though they couldn't quite understand what was going on.
Cilghal laid a gentle hand on Leia's shoulder. "This isn't a disease, Leia," she said sadly. "This is what starvation and despair look like. The only cure for these poor souls is time."
An old man shuffled forward slowly. Like all the others, he had been completely shorn and was dressed in filthy rags. His skin hung almost as loosely as his clothing, and it occurred to Leia then that it wasn't the imprisoning creature the stench was coming from.
"Who... who are you?" the man asked in a tremulous voice.
"Leia Organa-Solo, and this is Cilghal. We're here to help you."
At this, the man seemed to crumple. To Leia's dismay, he sank to the ground, sobbing helplessly. Others began to follow suit. Before long, the chamber was echoing with grief.
Leia stumbled outside, but there was no respite from the anguish resonating through the Force. The other building-creatures had been opened, too, and the camp was now swarming with hundreds of what may just as well have been walking corpses. Dimly, she realized that the shuttle had been called to land again outside the gate, and Cilghal's aides were handing out packs of rations to the desperate crowds.
"No--no!" Cilghal called. "Take those back!" She strode quickly to the shuttle, grabbing rations from frantic, tearing hands on the way. Shocked wails traveled through the crowded prisoners. "Do you want to kill them? Food like this will be too much of a shock," she instructed her people. "Water first, then a broth," and she started putting actions to her words.
All this, Leia watched dumbly, as if she were wrapped in a fog.
She jumped as though stung at the inarticulate cry that came from the southern end of the camp. Realizing that it had come, not from any of these wretched prisoners, but from one of Cilghal's medics, she started running towards it.
It was the young man who'd been attacked by the thorny barrier. He sat bonelessly, staring out in uncomprehending horror.
The trench was several meters wide and had been dug to line one entire side of the encampment. Leia found herself collapsed on the ground, like the junior medic, her arms wrapped around herself. Rocking back and forth, she felt an inane sense of gratitude at the tears that blurred her eyes, blocking out the sight of the countless bodies nearly overflowing the pit.
"They were too weak to work anymore." Leia recognized the tired voice as that of the old man from the first barracks. She glanced up, wiping her eyes, to find him standing next to her.
At some point, his hair had been shaved--or, more likely, eaten off by whatever organism took the place of a razor--but now the old man's head was covered in a thick silver stubble. She frowned at the tattoo that encircled his neck; she'd seen it somewhere before, but couldn't quite remember what it meant.
He held out his hand, and she took it, grateful to have something other than the evidence of mass murder to concentrate on. Though the old man couldn't have had the strength to help an insect rise, Leia let the illusion of his gallantry stand. She had a feeling there had been far too little chivalry in this man's life of late.
Then she had it. "That tattoo--you're a priest, aren't you?" He nodded silently. "And they--they let you live?"
His eyes dropped. "I... told them it was the mark of a scholar."
She squeezed his hand before letting it go. "I'm Leia."
"Yes, so you said. I am Ye'ush Emesdik. Please tell me, Leia: have we won? Is it over?"
The desperate hope in his eyes brought tears to her own again, because beneath it, she could tell that he already knew the answer. "No, it's not over yet, Ye'ush. I don't think it'll be over for a long time."
A startling commotion from the pit, and Leia turned to find the junior medic frantically trying to pull a body out, yelling for help. In the blink of an eye, as if she hadn't just been on the other side of the compound, Cilghal was there and calling for a stretcher.
Leia and Ye'ush backed away, giving the medical team room to work. For whatever morbid reason, though, she couldn't help watching. As the medics swarmed around the body, she saw that it was a woman--and she was pregnant. One emaciated arm moved weakly, and Leia pressed her hand to her mouth, stifling a cry.
"Her name was Yisura," Ye'ush said at her side. "She was one of the shapers' pets. They were so certain she would produce twins. When she was found to be carrying only one...." He didn't have to continue. It was all too obvious what had been done to her.
The group working over Yisura's body went still. Their heads bowed, and Leia's shoulders started shaking. She forced her anguish down, though, knowing that if she gave in to tears this time, she wouldn't be able to stop.
"Don't mourn her, Leia. She was done with life."
"But the baby...."
"Who would really want to bring a child into such a world?"
Leia thought of her own children, and she had no answer. "And what about you? Do you have a family?"
She turned to Ye'ush, only to find him looking smaller and frailer than he had scant moments ago. "Come. I'll show you where they are."
With the old man using her arm as a crutch, Leia let him lead her to the western edge of the camp. There was another huge pit in the earth there, but there were no bodies this time. It was circular, similar to the sarlacc pit back on Tatooine, but instead of one creature, there were many. What looked like oversized barnacles lined the edges of the pit, but the flames bursting from them refuted any aquatic heritage.
Leia knew then, with a sudden, dreadful certainty, where the layer of soot had come from. The clouds weren't heavy with the ashes of empty houses; no cities had been burned to cinder her clothes.
I've been walking through the remains of sentient beings
....She squeezed Ye'ush's arm, but it was more for her own support than for his. "How do you keep your faith under such awful circumstances?"
He gave a sharp bark of a laugh. "Your healer friend has agreed to remove my sacred mark at her earliest convenience. If there's one thing I have learned from this, it's that there are no gods." At this remark, all Leia could do was gape at him. "My tradition tells of gods of mercy, compassion, and justice," he explained. "Far better to disbelieve, than to accept that those gods allowed this."
"Have faith in the Force, then," she replied without thinking.
"Oh, I know your Force is real enough." Again that bitter laugh. "I've seen its miracles working through the hands of your healers. I can't hate gods that don't exist, but I can hate the Force." He gestured weakly at the sacrificial pit. "My wife, at least, was killed before she was thrown in. My son was not so lucky."
Leia staggered back, her head and heart reeling. She found herself in the middle of a knot of living skeletons, all of them reaching out to her, all of them pleading to be taken away from here, to be saved. Close to panic, she pushed through, almost stumbling over a child of no more than seven or eight. It held a doll as if it didn't know what to do with it. One of Cilghal's people must have brought the toy along for just such a circumstance.
Children, at least, Leia could understand.
She knelt down in front of the stubble-headed, raggedy child. "What's your name?"
"I'm Tiferet." It was a girl.
"Where's your mother, Tiferet?"
The little girl glanced toward the southern edge of the camp, then looked back at Leia with strangely flat eyes. "Mummy's in the pit with Daddy."
She didn't notice when her body betrayed her, falling to the ashen ground, or when Cilghal called for the shuttle to take her back up to the Rebel Dream. All she knew was that the darkest corners of her own mind were far safer than the reality in front of her.
* * *
She lay safe in bed, but she couldn't sleep. One of Han's arms was wrapped around her, holding her close, but Leia didn't feel anywhere near secure. She could tell Han was awake, and had been for a while, but for a long time neither one of them spoke.
Finally, Leia got up, pushing the comfort of Han's arm aside, along with the warmth of the blankets.
Han raised himself on one elbow. "Where you going?" he asked with a yawn as Leia began dressing.
"I can't stay here, Han. I can't just lie in bed while those people down there are still suffering."
"Cilghal wants you to stay up here."
"Cilghal can go to hell." The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she immediately regretted them.
The next thing she knew, Han was behind her, wrapping his arms around her. "Hey, you know, I did some research earlier today. The name of the planet, Tikvah. It was named after one of their gods, it means 'Hope'."
Leia laughed, and she wondered if it sounded as bitter as Ye'ush's laughter. "I met an old priest down there today, Han. He said that there are no gods." She bit her lip for a moment. "I think maybe he's right."
Han tightened his embrace. "I'll come with you this time."
They held hands all the way down to the docking bay.
End.