Story Idea: Engineer and the Astrologer

I have had this idea percolating in my mind for a few years now.  I am just not sure where it goes from here.

Colonies in space have been known to fail because of pirates, invading armies or ancient apocalyptic doomsday devices. There are spectacular stories that you hear of valiant struggles for survival.
But most of the time, when a colony fails, it is far more mundane, if just as intractable. There are personal conflicts, and toxic group dynamics. Adultery, stealing, fighting. Those kind of things.
But often times, it is harder to pin what the real problem is. And as in all things, there are experts with experience in that.

As the ship finished rotating out of N-space, the constellations outside the window snapped back into a physically familiar form. Anabraxis was not fond of travel, which was a strange thing for a man who spent every other month on a different world. He much preferred to have something solid underneath his feet. Even if it were an ocean world, of a gas-giant, or any of the other millions of permutations he had visited.

This particular colony was having issues. There are engineering challenges and social issues, but nothing they shouldn’t have been able to handle. And yet, the colony was on the verge of collapse. That happened a lot. That is how you got abandoned colonies like the Planet of the Chili Peppers. He was the Master Engineer they called to help fix their problems. And his wife, Lakshmi  was the Astrologer.

And she was a very highly renowned Astrologer for most of the Virgo Cluster.

Astrology, off Earth, is not trivial. You have to really understand a world and what is spiritually significant. You have to understand the people, the culture and the seasons, and timekeeping. And of course, the stars and constellations, the planets and moons, planetary rings, etc. Which of those are important? Some worlds with rings, you spent a great deal of time pondering the portents in the planetary rings. Some worlds, you focused on the winds and the clouds.

It is easy to say such things didn’t matter. But of course, that is how you end up with the issues you had here.