Palance III is a backwater world. Mostly a farming colony, because that's cheaper than replicators and the colonists like a quiet backwater lifestyle.
Dewilde City is their main town, it's where the colonial governor works and where Starships come. It's got all the services you'd find in a small city. Farmers and ranchers come and go in flyers and cargo flyer, the equivalent of pick-up-trucks.
Previous culture there left ruins. The inhabitants have been keeping this quiet beceuse they don't want to force them off their lands.
These are very old ruins, essentially a layer of artifical materials as a thin layer in the rock and occasional rock or concrete that has obviously been shaped.
This is about 2 million years old. The local farmers don't care, and just want to be left alone to farm and ranch.
Barton Raymond used to be a businesman, a trader prince. He suffered in some lawsuits about bad business practices and a couple of physical beefs that turned into criminal charges
Now he runs, essentially the farm equipment and supply store for the colony. He has small fry competition. Raymond is a big man and his hands are big guys.
Raymond is not a nice guy. He and his Employees are are totally down for arm twisting and coercion.
Raymond and his boys have recently discovered veins of Ryetalyn on the planet. They are working on plans to run the colonists off in order to secure the valuable mineral for themselves.
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Alfred Nash used to be a Starship Captain in Starfleet. 30 years ago, he followed a trail of clues into an ambush. Starfleet and his surviving crew agreed he was too aggressive and lept before considering the risk adequately.
He was forced to retire from Starfleet, disgraced.
Reports have him drifting around the galaxy, occasionally being a mercenary, occcassionally being a bounty hunter, occassionally doing a tour as a law enforcement officer.
Nash Approaches the PCs and lays it out. He has been lying low on Palance III. Semi-retired. He spotted Raymond and his thugs forming up into an organized crime group and the mysterious reluctance of the natives to call in the authorities.
Nash used to be one of the fastest draws with a phaser anyone had ever seen, and knew his way around a fight. These days he is grayer, older and slower, but makes up for it with experience and dirty tricks.
He doesn't like having friends and connecting with people. He feels like his closest friends threw him to the wolves and so, if he he feels himself getting attached to people, he packs up and moves on.
This has left him emotionally crippled. He occasionally drinks to excess. He is a prickly asshole.
He didn't like the idea of calling Starfleet for back-up, but he knows if he pokes into whatever weirdness the Farmers and Burton Raymond have going on, then eventually he's going to have to shoot some people. He'd like to have witnesses around can assert that such shootings are justified.
If asked Starfleet will okay the PCs to go back to Palance III and investigate. It's been too long since Starfleet has visited that world anyway. Starfleet will warn the PCs of NAsh's past and advise caution.