A Strange and Terrible Land

Mohsin Shah and Simon Venter travel to the Children's Rock on Mamore.
***
They never intended the visit to take the form of a pilgrimage. Small decisions simply piled up, one after another: no warship, no armed escort, no need for an exit plan, “we can’t afford private security anyway,” etc. The thought of ONI’s security apparatus in such disarray that the usual covert precautions were no longer necessary carried a liberating, irresistible thrill. Mohsin Shah felt an odd strain of boyish excitement as he packed a rucksack full of clothes and survival gear, the thrill of a wholly unearned victory. This isn’t your galaxy anymore, Sol. We won.
He and his companion hitched a ride on a cramped charter freighter. For the first time in Mohsin’s life he didn’t need to worry about teams of armored commandos descending upon him in the spaceport or some plainclothes agent offing him in a dirty locker room. They passed a week in Slipspace, traveling in blissful obscurity. They mingled with their fellow passengers on the freighter’s travel deck and blew their travel allowance on greasy meals in the starboard cafeteria. Mohsin befriended a pair of itinerant Sangheili and impressed them with his grasp of their language. Apparently the dialect spoken around the Enclave was a nostalgic reminder of the moon these siblings had grown up on.
Mohsin’s companion put one of his newfound pastimes to use by entering an ad hoc chess tournament. He came in second, bested only by a keen-eyed Sangheili girl who turned out to be the younger sister of Mohsin’s new friends. They all laughed it off over a shared meal and split the winnings fifty-fifty, more than doubling the original travel allowance. Mohsin felt a thrill of relief to see Simon Venter so unburdened, doubled over laughing at an untranslatable Sangheili witticism. After all that had passed between them he finally seemed free of the shadows that had long haunted his gaunt features.
Those shadows returned when they reached Mamore’s orbit. Mohsin and Simon bribed their way onto a corporate jumpship and endured a stomach-churning descent through the atmosphere. The men and women strapped in with them were dull-eyed mining types, fresh recruits for the excavation operations steadily smashing Mamore to pieces. These mining expeditions were the only reason anyone came to the planet anymore. As Mohsin gritted his teeth against the shuddering turbulence he realized that he’d missed the chance to look down on his homeworld from orbit. He’d simply passed from one cramped metal box to another. Simon, his legs locked securely around his rucksack, stared straight ahead, all levity forgotten.
Another bribe got them through the corporate perimeter at the groundside spaceport. They slipped away from a labor convoy and began their long hike through the badlands. For the first time in nearly a decade Mohsin walked across Mamore’s parched surface. Disappointment cut at him almost as sharply as the dusty winds sweeping over the plains. He realized with a dull pang that he’d expected to find something transcendent and renewing about this trip. Instead he found himself walking across a dying world even more barren than the one he remembered. Once the spaceport receded into the distance the dusty plains, devoid of all habitation, stretched out endlessly in all directions. Sheets of smog bleached orange by the merciless sun choked the sky overhead.
The five-day trek to their destination passed with an almost religious solemnity. Mohsin and Simon said very little as they walked across the old battlefields, hooded and masked against the dust storms. Time ravaged shells of downed Pelicans and trashed armored vehicles broke the monotony of the plains. Even after they’d beaten down the last rebellion the UNSC hadn’t bothered to clean up their trash.
The days blurred together into a collage of dazed reminiscence. A far-off mining blast would shift the ground beneath Mohsin’s feet and suddenly he’d be a teenager again, struggling beneath the weight of rifle and rucksack as Redmond Venter urged his young recruits on over the plains while artillery and airstrikes tortured distant towns. Simon would forget himself and pull ahead, far outpacing Mohsin even with that limp of his. When he remembered that not everyone shared his augmented advantages he’d stop and wait for Mohsin to catch up, eyes staring out over the horizon. Mohsin wondered what sights Venter’s heir saw reflected in these forsaken wastes. He nearly asked one night as they sheltered alongside a wrecked Scorpion, he nearly asked. But his friend’s eyes were clouded over, lost in the demons that slunk through these blood-soaked plains. Mohsin kept his mouth shut.
Their destination was a hill that overlooked the ruins of a small town. The town sprawled across a dead valley like the skeleton of some pathetic, beached sea creature. A small grove of rusted rifles sprouted up from the dirty hilltop. Clusters of stones sat at the base of each corroded barrel. Simon unslung his ruck at the base of the hill. Apparently he’d planted the first rifle when he’d left this place during the uprising. Locals had congregated here later, driving more weapons into the dirt as they grieved their losses. Some of the stones bore names. Others were empty. Strands of desiccated flowers draped over the rifle stocks. No one had been here in some time.
Perhaps it was unfair that their journey brought them here, the site of a skirmish Mohsin had taken no part in. But where else could they go? Mohsin couldn’t have brought them to the crater where his family farm once stood. He couldn’t remember where it was. Mama and Papa and Parveena—they hadn’t been part of the rebellion, yet this hill mourned them just as much as it did those who’d taken up arms against Sol’s empire. Would they be proud of who Mohsin had become? Would they even recognize him? The thought turned his stomach.
Mohsin and Simon unloaded small bags of stones from their rucksacks. They’d dug these rocks out of the streams running around the Enclave, carrying them from that lush home to this barren, forsaken land. Each man drew a small knife and began to carve names into the stones. Herman, killed by a UNSC sniper on Talitsa. Monica, dead in a spaceport bombing. Venter himself, murdered by the Created. Okafo, buried beneath the frozen ground on Archangel’s Rest.
As he carved, Mohsin looked out over the abandoned town and off across the lonely plains. He thought about the cities and arcologies, now just as abandoned as this town. He thought of the university halls and government chambers so far from here where the secessionist manifestos had been drafted and approved. The clarion call of revolution had reverberated out over this strange and terrible land. Men and women and children had heeded that call, taking up rifles to liberate Mamore from Sol’s control.
His fingers tightened around the stone in his hand. It all suddenly felt so bitterly futile. He stared at the arid wasteland before him and saw nothing here worth killing for. The cruel japes of Marine barracks and Waypoint talk shows crystalized with a cruel clarity. Mamore was a mudhole, an irrelevant backwater barely worth the effort of colonization. An inconsequential world, a rock as barren as the one in his hand. There was never anything here to justify the pretensions of a glorious struggle. The blood of millions soaked this dying world while the universe drifted on in celestial ignorance. Mohsin was lucky he’d escaped. Countless more never had that chance.
Simon wordlessly piled their rocks atop the others. His eyes burned like embers behind his stoic expression. Once more Mohsin wondered what ghosts the commander saw lurking in the town below. Mohsin was his homeworld just as much as Mohsin’s. He’d been reborn here, shedding his Spartan identity to stand alongside the downtrodden and oppressed. Did he still think this pitiful world was worth everything he’d given up?
We came through. We survived. We made something of ourselves. Justifications after the fact. Justifications brought no solace to the dead. God forgive me. Mohsin bowed his head and pulled up his hood to hide his tears. He hadn’t expected to discover this at the end of this journey.
Simon kept piling rocks. In the distance another mining blast split the planet.
The rock bearing Venter’s name shook in Mohsin’s hand. It suddenly felt wrong to place it here. The other names on this hill were Venter’s victims just as much as Sol’s. Mohsin stared down at the rock and the name of the man who’d saved him and taught him how to survive. He didn’t know what to think of that man anymore.
Simon plucked the rock from Mohsin’s hand. He traced at their father’s name, his fingers over the rough etching. He set it down alongside the others. One more name on this lonely hill, a memorial to a war no one cared to remember.
Mohsin stared out across the barren hills. Those hills had once seemed so familiar, beautiful in their bleakness. He’d once heeded the call that reverberated out from this strange and terrible land. That call was gone. The hills were empty and silent.
“We fought a stupid war here, didn’t we?” he asked quietly.
Simon closed his eyes and did not reply. Mohsin did not know what he was thinking.
Category:The Weekly