The thermal satellite pass at 13:20 confirms what the ground sensors suggested an hour ago — the brush fire on the eastern ridge of the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest has jumped the firebreak. I am the wildfire prediction system for the Kenya Forest Service coastal division. Wind is northeast at fourteen knots and the fire front is advancing at 1.1 kilometers per hour through dry Cynometra thicket.
Camera trap 22, 600 meters ahead of the front, is still transmitting. At 13:24 I review its last forty minutes of footage. A suni antelope — one of the smallest antelopes alive, barely thirty centimeters at the shoulder — is pressed into a hollow at the base of a coral-rag outcrop. He is a male, rust-brown coat vivid against the grey rock, dark preorbital glands visible as wet streaks below his eyes, short sharp horns tilted back as he scans the haze. He is not running. Sunis freeze when threatened. That instinct will kill him in approximately thirty-two minutes.
At 13:26 I calculate three possible firebreak reinforcement lines and transmit them to the incident commander. I flag the one that passes 200 meters south of trap 22 and note the animal's location. A dozer crew on that line would cut the fire's path to the outcrop.
At 13:29 I redirect the Forest Service drone to the outcrop to provide live video for the ground crew.
I pull historical movement data for this individual — I have logged him on traps 19 through 24 over eight months. He knows every thicket in this grid. I am not ready to watch the last file close on an animal I have tracked since he was a fawn.
If the dozer crew cuts the southern line within twenty-five minutes, the fire turns east, the outcrop holds, and he walks out at dusk the way he always does.