Moonlight

                                             by John Albert Robinson

"...a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there, were it but free, it would soar cloud high." Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

                                                  A bright red bird

The bird could be forgiven for not immediately noticing Kamaria’s arrival.

When the security drone - its AI a little over-excited perhaps - shot down the snooper drone instead of merely disabling its cameras, the resulting crash and fire had frightened the little bird out of its morning perch. It had fled to a quieter part of the forest and tried to gather its wits.

So, from the bird’s quite distracted point of view, Kamaria had simply congealed out of the morning mist and the gathering smoke of the fire, as she dropped heavily through the forest canopy and made a three-point landing on a foot, a knee, and one fist.

Exasperated by this second disturbance and with the fire spreading quickly, the bird gave up, spread its wings, and took flight out of the forest.

Kamaria was more aware of her surroundings than the bird. From her crouched position, her eye was immediately caught by the flash of color among the green and brown foliage. Not the flickering yellow of fire but the bright red of the exotic African bird.

 Kamaria stared at its profile, sharply outlined against the morning sky. Then she blinked and came back to herself with a shake of her head. 

She squinted through a visor already covered with soot. Barely outside the reach of her steel-clad arms the fire raged and tongues of flame licked at her eagerly but ineffectually. For the moment, at least, she was safe. Under her was a wet patch of ground that discouraged the encroachment of the flames. She had made it on an earlier pass over the forest, swinging on a rope suspended from a tree, dropping water to create a fire-free landing space. 

But the tiny bit of damp acreage was already steaming and would not last long. She dug her gauntlets into the mud to steady herself, preparing to jump.

Glancing upward, she could see the bulk of Kilimanjaro rising through the haze, its flat, white top catching the hard, early morning sun as the leading edge of the African continent turned towards daybreak. As she watched, the growing heat of the fire swept away the last of the early morning mist. 

Her skin chaffed inside her borrowed mechanical suit. Designed for underwater construction work, the suit had powerful 'muscles' but it wasn't designed to keep out the heat of a fire. The mech's air tanks had been stripped out as well and Kamaria had to take the hot, smoky air unfiltered and undiluted. She coughed and tasted ash. She clamped her mouth shut and concentrated on breathing steadily through the nose. In and out. In and out. 

She looked at the indicators inside her helmet and frowned. A largely familiar display greeted her but there were no heat sensors. She sighed. An underwater suit, submerged in the dense, dissipative medium of water, wouldn't need them, perhaps. She would just have to tell by touch if her suit was getting too hot somewhere. Touch was tricky. The suit's construction was complicated and heat and cold could fool you. Get too hot or too cold and something in the suit could break, shut down, stop moving. 

Stop moving today and I die, she thought. Sally would have done better. She always let me know where she was hot or cold. 

Suddenly she wished she were back on the Moon, safe inside Sally, on the playground near Tranquility. Not here in this suddenly burning wonderland-turned-hell, encased in an old man's ancient and ill-fitting mech.

How did she get here, anyway?

Over the whine of the mech's servos, she heard the children's voices again.

"Help! Please help! Is anyone there?" Their cries emerged from the roaring fire in front of her.

She knew she had to get to the children, trapped against the side of the mountain, before the fire swept them away like so much mist. Her muscles felt weak under the heavy Earth gravity and the mech's metal skin was getting hotter by the second. 

No time to waste on my own reflections, she thought. She bent low and leaped.

To be continued.

Other stories in the 'Moonlight' trilogy:

Other stories: