There were planets nearby, but all uninhabited and mostly gas giants. The few that weren’t the lizards hadn’t seen fit to take interest in, leaving this system one of several ‘stepping stones’ within their territory that they commonly passed through en route to other locations. In lieu of running constant patrols through enemy systems Star Force had begun dropping the little probes off and coming back later to pull data dumps from them, allowing them to see a record of all traffic and activity within a system whereas a patrol would only get a snapshot. With the lizards expanding to so many systems it was determined that a heavier surveillance was required, with the added benefit of the ability to belatedly track convoys and other ship movements. The probes didn’t have the ability to transmit to the relay grid and were little more than stealthy little cameras operating off of passive scans. The stellar radiation reflecting off ship hulls and shields usually gave enough of a signature to pick up at range, though some stealthier and smaller vessels could pass through unnoticed, especially if they were using an irregular jumpline, so the detection grid wasn’t perfect, but it was clandestine.
