Aye, aye, Commodore, Joshua grunted when the channel was closed.
Polluted cloud, Melvyn said in contempt.
Biological warfare, Ashly suggested in a grieved tone. Not nice. Typical of Laton, mark you. But definitely not nice.
I wonder if its his famed proteanic virus? Dahybi said.
Doubt it, that was microscopic. And it didnt glow in the dark, either. Id say it has to be radioactive dust.
Then why isnt the wind moving it? Sarha asked. And how did it form in the first place?
Well find out in due course, Warlow said with his usual pessimism. Why hurry the process?
True enough, Joshua agreed.
The Lady Mac was heading in towards the planet at a steady one gee. As soon as each ship in the little fleet had emerged from its final jump into the Lalonde system, it had accelerated away from the coordinate, the whole fleet spreading out radially at five gees to avoid presenting an easy target grouping. Now they were holding a roughly circular formation twenty thousand kilometres wide, with Gemal and the cargo ships at the centre.
The six blackhawks were already decelerating into low orbit above Lalonde to perform a preliminary threat assessment. Bloody show-offs, Joshua thought. Lady Mac could easily match their six gee manoeuvres if she wasnt encumbered with escort duties.
Even with naval tactics programs running in primary mode, Terrance Smith was ever cautious. The lack of any response from Durringham was extremely bad news, although admittedly half anticipated. What had triggered the fleet commanders paranoia was the total absence of any orbital activity. The colonist-carrier starships had gone, along with the cargo ships. The inter-orbit craft from Kenyon were circling inertly in a five-hundred-kilometre equatorial parking orbit, all systems powered downeven their navigation beacons, which was contrary to every CAB regulation in the flek. Of the sheriffs offices ageing observation satellite there was no trace. Only the geosynchronous communication platform and civil spaceflight traffic monitoring satellites remained active, their on-board processors sending out monotonously regular signals. He lacked the transponder interrogation code to see if the navy ELINT satellites were functional.
After a quick appraisal, Smith had ordered a descent into a thousand-kilometre orbit. His fleet moved in, the combat-capable starships dumping small satellites in their wake to form an extensive high-orbit gravitonic-distortion-detector network. If any starship emerged within five hundred thousand kilometres of the planet, the satellites would spot it.
The blackhawks released a quintet of military-grade communication satellites as they raced towards the planet. Ion engines pushed the comsats into geostationary orbit, positioning them to give complete coverage of the planet, with overlapping reception footprints covering Amarisk in its entirety.
Twenty thousand kilometres out from Lalonde, the blackhawks split into two groups and swept into a seven-hundred-kilometre orbit at differing inclinations. Each of them released a batch of fifteen observation satellites, football-sized globes that decelerated further, lowering themselves into a two-hundred-kilometre orbit; their parallel tracks provided a detailed coverage sweep over a thousand kilometres wide. The blackhawks themselves, with their powerful sensor blisters augmented by electronic scanner pods, were integrated into the effort to reconnoitre Durringham and the Juliffe tributary basin. The intention was to compile a comprehensive survey with a resolution below ten centimetres for the mercenary scouts to use.
Its virtually impossible, Idzerda, the captain of the blackhawk Cyanea , told Terrance Smith after the first pass. That red cloud is completely opaque, except for the edges where it thins out, and even there the images were receiving of the land below are heavily distorted. Im not even sure cloud is the word for it. It doesnt move like cloud should. Its almost as if a film of electrophorescent cells has been solidified into the air. Spectrographic analysis is useless with that light it emits. One thing we have noticed; we ran a comparison with the old cartography memory from the sheriffs observation satellite which you supplied. The cloud is brightest over towns and villages. Durringham shines like theres a star buried under there. There is no way of telling what is going on below it. The only villages we can even see are the ones furthest up the tributaries where the glow peters out. And they are wrong.
Wrong? Terrance Smith asked.
Yes. Theyre the most recently settled, the most primitive ones, right?
Yes.
Weve seen stone houses, gardens, domelike structures, metalled roads, heck, even windmills. None of it was there on the old images you gave us, and they were only recorded a month ago.
That cant possibly be correct, Terrance said.
I know that. So either the whole lot are holograms, or its an illusion loaded directly into the observation satellite processors by this electronic warfare gimmick you warned us about. Although we cant see how it disrupts the blackhawks optical sensors as well. The people who put up that cloud have got some startlingly potent projection techniques. But why bother? Thats what we dont understand. Whats the point of these illusions?
What about power emission centres? Terrance Smith asked. It must take a lot of energy to generate a covering layer like that red cloud.
We havent found any. Even with their electronic jamming we should be able to spot the flux patterns from a medium-sized fusion generator. But we havent.
Can you locate the jamming source?
No, sorry, its very diffuse. But its definitely ground based. It only affects us and the satellites when were over Amarisk.
Is the red cloud radioactive?
No. Were fairly sure of that. No alpha, beta, or gamma emission.
What about biological contamination?
No data. We havent attempted to sample it.
Make that your priority, Terrance said. I have to know if its safe to send the combat scout teams down.
On its following pass, the Cyanea released two atmospheric probes. The vehicles were modified versions of the marque used by planet-survey missions, three-metre delta-wing robots with the central cylindrical fuselage crammed full of biological sampling and analysis equipment.
Both of them pitched up to present their heatshield bellies to the atmosphere, curving down towards the surface as they aerobraked. Once they had fallen below subsonic velocity, airscoop intake ramps hinged back near the nose, and their compressor engines whirred into silent life. A preprogrammed flight plan sent them swooping over the first fringes of the red cloud, fifteen kilometres to the south-east of Durringham. Encrypted data pulsed up to the newly established bracelet of communication satellites.
The air was remarkably clear, with humidity thirty per cent down on Lalondes average. Terrance Smith accessed the raw image from a camera in the nose of one probe. It looked as though it was flying over the surface of a red dwarf star. A red dwarf with an azure atmosphere. The cloud, or hazewhateverwas completely uniform, as though, finally, an electromagnetic wavefront had come to rest and achieved mass, then someone had polished it into a ruby surface. There was nothing to focus on, no perspective, no constituent particles or spores; its intensity was mechanically constant. An optically impenetrable layer floating two kilometres above the ground. Thickness unknown. Temperature unknown. Radiating entirely in the bottom end of the red spectrum.
No real clouds anywhere above it, Joshua murmured. Like most of the fleets crews he had accessed the datavise from the atmospheric probes. Something had bothered him about that lack; ironically, more than the buoyant red blanket itself. Amarisk always had clouds.