Cold Eyes

Cold Eyes is an original First Contact novel, written as a tribute to the 1974 science fiction classic, The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
The UN warship Magellan is twelve light-years from Earth, exploring a cold eye, a tidally locked super-Earth called Bee. At least two advanced intelligent species evolved on the planet, but the crew's attempts at radio communication result in garbled replies. No one is waiting for them in orbit. The crew has to figure out why. Any misunderstandings could lead to war.