Algol would be like Kruger 60 and Lalande. Squidy wasn’t about to let them pass without a fight and the spot they’d pick for an ambush was right under the hull of his fighter. The rocky core of that planet below was shrouded in layers of clouds whose weight drove the surface temperature to 700 degrees, but the upper layers of the atmo were low-pressure, billowing, dull yellow fog, plenty cool enough to hide a Squidy ship in if they came down slow using just artificial gravity. With the planet’s hot surface behind them and the murky atmo around them, they could partially hide from IR scans. The clouds made LiDAR almost useless. As long as the aliens didn’t use active emissions, it was a perfect place to hide in ambush. "I’ve got intermittent contacts again," Dirty said. "Something maybe in the upper cloud layers. Want me to paint ‘em with narrow beam? They’ll definitely notice." "Hardway wants visual." Lightning flashed in the yellow murk below like a detonating salvo. Discharges off aliens hulls?
