Gold Cloud

Gold is one of the Most precious elements on the periodic table. It's also quite rare. Gold is Rare throughout the universe because it's a quite heavy atom. It consists of 79 protons and 118 neutrons . Which makes it quite hard to make. New gold can only be produced during a few events that happen quite rarely in the galaxy. Chief among them are supernova explosions. Neutron star collisions also generate gold. But both of these events are extremely Devastating and mining gold during these events are impossible. As whatever comes into the path of the explosion will instantly get disintegrated.

Gold could generally be mined on planets that are closer to previous supernova explosion sites along with a bunch of rare minerals. Gold was considered precious ever since the dawn of civilization. It was valued for it's shininess, During the advent of technological era, Gold was valued for it's Good Conductive properties. Even now during the modern Age of the stars, Gold was still pretty widely used. From various equipment to various tools, it still saw wide use in the society. Although it wasn't considered a precious metal anymore, but it was still something that one wouldn't expect to find just about anywhere.

So, Dr. Helen was quite astonished when she found out that Gold particles actually made up a good percentage of the Heavy gas cloud that covered the whole planet. This explained why the scanners of the shuttles and the Shore were quite ineffective at penetrating the cloud.

Both the scanners on the shuttles and the main scanner of the shore used rays that was really easily reflected by gold. The main Scanner could also use Alpha, Beta and Gamma rays, but as they were really destructive, they didn't use much use. As anything it hit might die instantly. This explained why the scanners couldn't see anything beyond 300 meters. All the rays got scatters as soon as they hit the gold particles and were wasted.

"Switch to wide area visual scanning. Use that to navigate through this cloud."

"Yuki copy"

"Hawk copy"

The pilot of the shuttle pushed a button and a 360 view of their whole shuttle was generated. It showed everything and anything near a 1500 meter radius in all directions. The Gold particles the gases, it could see through them all!

"Proceed to Descend towards the ground"

The shuttles kept going ahead and through the heavy clouds. Although the Shuttles were going really fast, but the layer of cloud was thicker than expected. After continuously going through the clouds, it suddenly dissipated around them.

"We've got visuals.", The Pilot of Yuki confirmed.

The on-board cameras started to send the visuals back to the shore in orbit. Everyone the bridge held their breaths as they saw the first footage of B1. Yuki was currently over what seemed a ocean of black. It was water according to the footage, but it wasn't the typical color.

"It's black?", Dr. Helen watched the footage. The water underneath the Yuki was black. It wasn't your typical black. It was so black that light didn't shine through it or reflected. Any light shown on it was instantly devoured like a black hole.

Although the entire planet was still really dark, Some light actually managed to go through the Thick cloud and shone on the surface of the planet.

Soon the footage showed that the hawk and the escort mechs caught up with the Yuki. As the 1st one to depart, it naturally reached the surface first. The mechs quickly gathered around the two shuttles in a formation.

"Start scanning your surrounding, the gold particles shouldn't be a problem anymore. Send in the probes.", Helen spoke from the bridge.

"Sending in the probes.", an operator aboard the Hawk said.

Soon thousands of single use probes were released from the Hawk. These probes followed their programming and pre-planned route and started to congregate into groups before heading towards their destinations. Each probe was a bit bigger than an Apple. But these probes had powerful capabilities that helped them scan their surroundings and sent the data back to the nearest shuttle. Which in turn sent the data back to the Shore. Which compiled and created a visual map of the terrain of the shore. Currently as far as the probe saw, there was only Black water. As the water didn't reflect any light, the probes didn't saw anything and only reported a void beneath them.

"Mark this continuous void as the ocean of the planet", Dr. Helen asked the operator in charge.

After quickly going about 10 Km away from the shuttles the probe started to break off from their groups and went on individual directions. They each needed to cover a huge amount of area.

"Take a sample of the water. I want to know what it's made of.", Dr. Helen spoke through the comm.

Soon a smaller probe was launched that dived into the water and took some sample at different depths of the ocean. It brought back the samples aboard the Yuki where an operator quickly plugged the probe into a lab machine where it started analyzing the water.

"Update me as soon as the analysis is done."

"Copy that."

"Yuki, Hawk begin your preliminary analysis of the planet. You know what to do."

"Yuki Copies"

"Hawk Copies"

"Good luck."

With that Helen moved away from her terminal. The crew aboard Yuki and Hawk knew what to do and what kind of data she wanted. So they started to gather the preliminary data of the planet they were on, The Air composition, the gravity and Magnetic Fields etc.

These were the 1st things that needed to be established before the other things came. So finishing up with these were the first priority.

Dr. Helen moved to the Center map where the scanned terrain of the planet was being showed. She watched with excitement as the terrain was slowly being generated in front of her eyes. Although it would take some time. It was crucial to map out the planet before proceeding with their main investigation.