Thirty five thousand, seven hundred and eighty-six kilometres above the surface, the satellite sits in patient orbit. Its lens adjusted to point somewhere near the equator. Protocols are initiated and attitude thrusters fire, bringing a patch of Pacific Ocean under scrutiny. Zoom is employed by one factor. And employed again. An island comes to focus, its geography overlaid with theoretical grid co-ordinates.

Methodically, each grid is scrutinised. The satellite tracks without anxiety or excitement. Electronic eyes rove over muted greens and browns and saturated blues. The satellite has many eyes, and it is the microwave receiver that locks onto the target, its transmitter blooming in a spectrum of invisible darkness. Cameras are brought to maximum resolution. With the Satellite’s obit radius and its angle of attack, all images processed appeared almost two-dimensional; skill was required discerning valuable data from background clutter. But that was another job, for another.

Target #01 located, noted and recorded. Data is streamed directly elsewhere as per instruction. Why this should be done is no concern of the machine hovering in the Clarke belt. Thinking was for something else. Eyes down, content, the satellite continues to watch. There was always something to look at.

                                                                ***

She tried hard not to, but she just couldn’t help it. She tilted her head to let the fitful breeze dry some of the moisture from her skin. As her breath came in jagged hiccups; Kamielle squeezed her eyes shut and willed the tears to stop. After a minute or so the sobs shaking her thin frame began to die off until just a few sniffs stood between her and the quiet that coated this place. It was too quiet here. Everything about this place was wrong and scary and confusing and she didn’t know what to do or how she was supposed to do it. And now, with her eyes closed, there was nothing stopping the maelstrom of events that swept away the last three days from replaying itself over and over.

Thinking of home brought Kamielle to the brink of tears again. She had been so excited when her mother had announced that the Captains had decided to head to the islands near Basco to trade the catch. She loved Shore trips. The colourful markets, the different smells, all the animals and noise and people and houses and trees and sand. It was all exciting and new and in her opinion; they didn’t touch shore often enough. So when her uncle told her he had an errand for her island side; she had damned near danced off the decks of The Swithland. Put some smart clothes on, he said. Take a package for me, he said. You won’t be long and here’s some pennies for sweets, he said.

So she had done just that, mum had given  her her sister’s old blazer to wear, now she’d patched it all up, and she had put on her cleaner boots, before skipping off ship; following her uncle’s directions. Dammit! If only she had waited until the journey back to go into the sweet shop this would never have happened. But she had money in her pocket; she would buy some chocolate for the rest of the trip, or maybe some humbugs.

It was clear in her mind’s eye. The bell had tinkled as she pushed open the door; it was hotter, more humid in here. There were a dozen bodies packed in, all going through shelves, gossiping, giggling. Money changed hands, people changed places; here and there, there were glimpses of brightly coloured plastic and sugary promises. But it was lunch time; the place was heaving as all the school kids spent their lunch money.

It was then that the men had turned up. Their pale skin and heavy clothes immediately marked them as strangers. They wore the same black and hid behind sunglasses and earpieces and moved like sharks in deep water. Before anyone knew anything, they were separating the crowd in two. One half, pushed to the back of the shop with a swift wave of a shotgun; held all the few adults present, plus all the younger children and the market kids that didn’t go to school. They only wanted the kids in uniform. Rough hands shoved Kamielle out into the street; those that had been split from the crowd were pushed into a van. They didn’t speak Filipino, or even any of the old languages; only too quickly in something Kamielle didn’t understand.

From there, the next forty-eight hours dissolved into an oil-slick of shouting and shoving and crying and diesel fumes and a long time in the cramped, hot darkness of the back of the van as it bounced away from the coast. Then there had been the plane, the most massive, most terrifying thing Kamielle had ever seen in her life. And then a bus, full of angry, scared kids, who looked older with sullen eyes and sharp tongues. Then a warehouse with a big screen showing the same short film over and over again featuring an overly happy woman speaking in a foreign language and brandishing bottles of water and kitchen knives at the audience. Hesitantly, Kamielle touched her neck. Her mind shied away from that warehouse.

They had manhandled her, and others, onto a jeep driving across this unfamiliar island, bouncing and pitching past lots of empty grasslands and woods, only rarely passing any buildings. Without warning, one by one, teenagers in identical cream blazers and red ties were shoved from the car until only she was left. They had kicked her out with a satchel and a mouthful of angry words she didn’t know the meaning of; before racing off in a cloud of churned up loam and blue smoke.

And then she was alone.
The quiet screamed down her ears.

Without thinking, she had followed her feet. They took her out from the scrubby savannah and away from the tall thick grasses and lumpy soil. Without thinking she followed her ears. They left behind the sounds of rustling grass and chirping crickets. Numb, she stumbled to the sea.

It was at the water’s edge she had folded, knees in the coarse white-yellow sand. It was here that she realised how small and very far away from home she was. It was then she began to cry.

But her tears had stopped now, and she was still here. She didn’t like feeling sorry for herself. She decided to look at the bag the strange men had thrust at her earlier. There wasn’t much. Bottles of water, foil pouches covered in Japanesse script, a map of the island and a compass. And a little box with a hinged lid. Kamielle tried to make out what was written on the side. But she could read even less English than she could speak, and that wasn’t much. She looked at the biggest letters and took it a bit at a time; hoping it would make more sense, hoping it would distract her from the vast bulk of foreign ground that loomed behind her.

O R A L B

Kamielle remained unenlightened. She opened up the little lid, inside just plastic and metal with some string coming out of it. The string felt waxy and smelled of humbugs, no matter how much she pulled, more kept coming out of the box. Kamielle laughed. It was the wondrous, unreserved laugh of a child unchecked. No sooner had it escaped her, Kamielle smothered the giggles. This was not a place for laughter, the darkening trees behind her and the volcano stooping in the distance did not agree to laughter. The broken jetty and torn pilings on the tiny peninsular did not encourage levity. The strong breeze snatched away the remaining sound, leaving Kamielle with a handful of limp waxy string.

Kamielle decided to take the initiative. She needed to be busy. She was going to go fishing. Before she lost the fragile confidence she’d built for herself, she stuffed her uncle’s package into her new satchel and began rummaging through her pockets. After a couple of goes she found her pocket knife. Looking at it, she smiled a glum smile, she’d had this pen knife since she was ten, it had been a gift, the first knife made you crew. Her heart had broken when one of the big men in boots had snapped off the main blade, leaving only a tenth of an inch or so after the hinge. But luckily she was after something else. With her blunt nails it was a bit of a fiddle, but finally she managed to extricate the tiny little tweezers from the red plastic.

In a few minutes, the tweezers were bent and twisted into hooks and the box of string had been played out and then wrapped round a long stick. A short walk saw Kamielle on a stretch of rocky beach, large boulders interspersed with broken shells and dark sand and rock pools. She walked down the cracked and collapsing remains of a concrete jetty, chunks of concrete decorated the beach all around it and iron uprights thrust out of the sand like bleeding fingers. Breaking open some shells gave her some bait. Kamielle was in her element now, the familiar routines soothing, all her attentions were focused on casting her ramshackle line. She felt the knotted tension in her shoulders melt away and began to daydream.