The former Master-at-arms, Resolute First division, rolled out of his bunk at sunrise, as he did every day for thirty years, rain or shine, illness or health.
A sore back popped and cracked during forward bends. His cat wormed her way through bare ankles, asking for breakfast. A coffee machine gurgled, dispensing dark liquid into a carafe.
Otherwise, Fort Vantage was quiet; soldiers dismissed months prior on orders from a Commander of the Army, who left his post that very day, just in case the phone should ring.
But the phone did not ring, and had not for a very long time.
The reservation’s electricity was back on, courtesy of a midnight shift utility crew there to service a legacy geothermal generating plant.
Their truck came his way when he turned on a porch light. The light revealed a package on the stoop. The package contained gifts from well-wishers on Earth, sent through the wormhole.
Single-serving trays of tiny fish, sealed in oil, containers more costly than the meal itself. A month’s supply of breakfast oats, sensibly packaged in a cardboard tube. A rabbit-fur hat from a place called Russia.
The truck pulled around the circle. A workman asked if the water well had started back up.
He replied, “I’m pretty sure it has.”
“Seen anything up the mountain?”
“Not since Lagna made orbit.”
The man knew about that one, a year past. The observatory dome had rotated north.
When morning crept into the skies, the custodian of the Fort Vantage Historical Site put on his Russian hat, sporting fuzzy ear flaps suitable for the end of winter, on a day not too cold for the camp car to reliably start.
But if snow came, it would be impractical to approach the citadel from the ground, a mission that would then have to wait until late spring.
Gigantic blast doors crouched at the base of Observatory Mountain like hooded lion’s paws, lurking in the shadows of overlong sleeves.
He drove past, almost afraid to look, lest some deadly artifact of Eeka’s mysterious past should notice transgression, and make him pay.
Although better he should have worried about the access road, fog pouring down the side of the mountain, blotting out an early morning sun — an invitation to steer off the edge.
At the first barrier, a padlock was stiff enough to almost break the key, giving cause to wonder what he would do if that happened.
A few wiggles. The lock yielded. Then two more loops around the mountain.
And another barrier, already open.
A padlock gone missing. An empty guardhouse. A creeping sense of dread.
He might have turned around and traveled south toward warm weather and sandy beaches, quitting his job, claiming a vintage camp car for the military pension he would never otherwise receive.
Instead, he drove to a parking area below the observatory, above clouds and fog, beneath brightening blue skies, eye-level with a row of ground-to-space particle beam weapons, arranged in a semi-circle at the far edge of the lot.
The machines were stalled mid-stride, stuck halfway in, or out of their vaults, depending on which direction they were going at the time.
As was an open-scaffold elevator car, on its way up or down from the observatory proper, adjacent three flights of stairs.
He could climb the stairs, or enter a tunnel where it was said uninvited visitors would be torn apart by invisible forces beyond the comprehension of mortals.
The tunnel was dark and forbidding, by far the less attractive option, and guarded only a few steps in by the figure of a man in a wheelchair.
The man had been dead long enough to dry out. Still, the tunnel was musty in its own right, discouraging entry; and the custodian had seen enough.
On pavers next to the wheelchair, a leather-bound journal lay open, splayed spine-up; exposed to the elements, else the finder would have left it to the discretion of conservators.
He carried it to the car, temporary curation granting entitlement to at least read the last page, inscribed in cursive Devanagari, wherein a once-ruler of Firewalk recorded his final missive.
“I was too weak to bury the last of my fellows, too ashamed to call for help, too fearful to leave this place while able. Whosoever finds these words, know that we are now free men, every one of us.”