He flips through the rest of it. Any comments on anything else in the atlas?

Nobody else has comments, though Azlisa looks to be metaphorically biting her tongue about the depictions of Laukera.

As he passes, more of the world becomes visible. "East" is desert, and desert, and more desert, and the occasional oasis. The only civilization, other than occasional villages that are trying to camouflage themselves, is the iron road, a long steel line cutting through the desert, occasional covered stops usually half-buried by standstorm. Aside from stainless steel rails, the occasional train he passes could be nineteenth century.

And then he can see the city.

(He can see it quite quickly. Shuttles go vroom.) 

It is... quite the contrast, with the preindustrial village and the pictures in the book. There's a lot of it. The best comparisons for what it looks like would be "overly optimistic depictions of Victorian London" and "illustrations in science-fiction magazines" and the occasional demon special project that is usually built very far away from anyone who would blow it up for laughs. It is indeed in a desert; there's an oasis vaguely central, but - there are huge factories belching smoke and steam into the sky, there are tall blocks of apartments of reinforced concrete and plaster or of glass and steel, there are open-air fountains blasting water into the sky; the city (barring one inner area surrounding the oasis which is mostly mud brick) is laid out in paved grid, with asphalt paved streets for cars overshadowed by palms and other desert-native trees and elevated tracks over them for electric light rail; more drones are hovering around, some of them armed, others on package delivery, and there are multiple optimistic airports scattered around the city with landing pads for shuttles. (There are also shuttles. Not very many, and looking shiny and deadly and like they were built to be weapons as much as transport.) There's electric lighting over the streets for when it gets dark and illuminated signs in front of buildings with pictures of whatever they sell as well as characters spelling out the names of whatever the shop is or what's being advertised. (In Qalmiri, which seems to be the local lingua franca inasmuch as there is one.)

There's also a fantastically evil-looking skyscraper in the center of town, for whatever that's worth.

"Wow, I've never seen anything quite like it." Can he commandeer an actual landing pad or is his best bet setting down oustside?

"That's what most people say," says the officer.

It doesn't look like there's an air traffic control sufficient to stop him?

The question was more about whether they look sufficiently loadbearing and sizable!

He touches down on one such pad. Glances at the soldiers and interpolates all their bonds off. Opens the door.

The Traveler (whose name is not 'Traveler', nor 'Nau,' but something that cannot really be expressed in languages for people who talk with voices, but they usually do) has a problem. That problem is that someone has found him, which is glorious and ideal, except that (a) he's pretty sure he's not the only person whose ship crashed as soon as it got here, so this probably isn't a rescue, and (b) he's going to be SO VERY, VERY ARRESTED for all the crimes he has been committing, which is going to be mildly annoying.

So, two problems. Probably more.

Also the guy isn't picking up. So, probably (c) this is from a foreign power that will object to Everything.

Either way, he'll have a drone floating in front of the Mysterious Civilization's Mysterious Shuttle when it lands. And not people uselessly pointing guns, that won't help unless it's the Unity of Man, in which case it will be counterproductive.

He can see... his troops flooding out... and someone bioengineered who is not, in fact, made of substances identical to Actual Meat.

Well. That's new.

"Greetings," he says. "You have the Hegemon's attention." And plasma cannons trained on everything coming out.

"Hi! I found these guys torching a village. I hope you need to work on your troop discipline but suspect you need to work on your war crimes code. And these folks were being held hostage so I gave them a lift. A handful of others preferred to make their own way so this might not be everyone you knew to be missing, if you keep track of that kind of thing, but I am not aware of any who were dead when I left."

He needs to work on his everything because everyone here is a savage.

Saying that won't help.

"Thank you, now who the flaming antimatter are you?"

"My name's Cam!"

"From where?"

(The soldiers are not wholly sure which way to go -)

"Return to barracks! I will deal with you later."

And he can handle assuring Iraqual that there's nothing to assassinate him over worry about later.

And Azlisa is watching, because she really wants to see this.

"Depends what language you're speaking. I usually go with 'Hell', in my native one."

"I find that unlikely, since neither an Abaddonian nor Hades accent sounds like Laukerol."

"None of those proper nouns refer to anywhere I've ever been."

"No doubt. Well, you are presently in PROFECTUS, heart of civilization on this terrible, terrible world which for some bizarre reason has magic. Congratulations. Do you like the landing pad I made you?"

"Eh, it's okay. It has magic? That wasn't obvious so far, it can't be very good."

"No! It's horrible! Everything about this stupid, stupid planet is horrible!"

(Azlisa appreciates that the absolute dictator of the newest Great power doesn't seem to know or care she's there. She's learning a lot!)

"Then why the fuck do you live here, dude?"

"As I have little doubt you noticed, every ship that enters this system crashes on this terrible terrible planet, no matter why or how it arrives! Are you not here for the same reason?"