"Something just doesn't feel right."

Captain Ret studied the scan while the words of his chief engineer, Alia, washed over him echoing his own thoughts.

"Well, they have plenty of artificial satellites. No defense network, though. No harbor autopilot..." he murmured as he looked at the readout.

"We're close to Yajewa space. What if this is a protected world?" Alia asked while peering at the large monitor that showed the space outside of the ship like a giant windshield half expecting a Yajewa Emissary class Dreadnought to rip from microspace between their cargo hauler and the blue planet.

"They haven't been anywhere near this sector for millennium. Besides, they tend to leave at least one representative to rule once their 'cleansed' world reaches rudimentary law based organizational level. If they were under the Yajewa Protectorate we'd have run into one of their Energy Automaton by now, probably while we were still in microspace." He looked out at the spiderweb of artificial light on the night side of the planet. "They would have never discovered how to make artificial light beyond a cooking fire, much less left their planet." Ret gave an involuntary shudder thinking about the countless planets the Protectorate had forced to remain in bronze level development for, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of years simply because they believed intragalactic politics to be somehow inherently evil -- the multi headed Beast they liked to call it.

Alia nodded, but her furrowed brow betrayed that she was not fully convinced. "So, what, it is just a rural planet? A far flung colony?"

Ret shrugged. "Could be another cult? Or maybe they were in the Protectorate or were forgotten. Or, hell, it's possible they are descendants of two idiots like us who managed to get all the way out to a habitable world far from any filament with an aging ship and no extra containment rings." He shot an exasperated look at her.

Alia held up her hands, "Hey, you were the one that said that we couldn't afford anything extra for this trip! How did I know that the main AND the hot backup would fail less than forty splits into microspace after you bought them!"

"It's a CRITICAL..." Ret saw that 'we've been over this' look and stopped himself mid sentence. "Never mind." His display jittered with a new information notification and he expanded some freshly gathered images.

"Look at this!" he said as he passed over the display sheet.

"More chemical rocket pads?" She asked, squinting at what looked like regularly spaced pits with machines, possibly ships, in them.

"No. They are fairly close to some of those pads, though. But look...people! They couldn't have people that close to a chemical rocket launch pad!"

Alia nodded. "Nope. So at least they have anti or reflective grav if they are taking off from someplace so packed." She zoomed in on a slightly asymmetrical disc shaped machine. "And these craft do not look like they were built for the atmosphere. Though they do look like they are made out of metal of some kind." She shook her head. She supposed it was possible to create a fairly robust spacecraft out of simple metals. "This is a weird place. What do you think?"

"I don't think we have a choice. We can't get anywhere else without a containment unit and we can't even send a message this far from any filament. If they have a spaceport, then they have parts. I say we land."

"Alright, then." Alia pulled up a live image of one of the landing bays. "There's a group in some sort of full face suit, one in black and the rest in white. I don't recognize the uniform but probably off-worlders too trying to avoid the rich oxygen atmosphere. Let's land near them. Cloaked?"

Ret was moving through his pre-landing checklist. He had broadcast landing clearance requests on all standard micro-dimension channels and received no response -- in fact, there was no chatter at all. "Definitely cloaked." And brought the vessel around to make an approach.