Haze — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

What lies beneath the fog of the millions of orbiting nanotech satellites that shroud the world called Haze?

Major Keir Roget's mission is to make planetfall in secret, find out, and report back to his superiors in the Federation, the Chinese-dominated government that rules Earth and the colonized planets.

Now, scouting Haze, he finds a culture both seemingly familiar, yet frighteningly alien, with hints of a technology far superior to that of the Federation. Yet he is not quite certain how much of what he sees is real or how to convey to his superiors a danger he cannot even prove -- if he can escape the planet....