9
Smoke lay on his stomach.
He was on the gravel roof of the service hangar.
The air was balmy. The rainforest swayed in the remnants of thunderstorm winds.
The gravel rubbed against his chest.
Above, a box-like spaceship broke through the clouds and began its decent toward the tarmac. Smoke watched the ship with curiosity as it lumbered downward.
He tapped his cybernetic implant. The time appeared in ghost letters across the orange background of his visor.
Right on time.
He adjusted his rifle and looked into the optical sight, using it to look at his surroundings closer. He swept past service personnel chatting near the service hangar, past automated luggage carts zipping down the tarmac to meet the box ship, past a police car sitting near an electric fence, past the jet bridges,
