All were owned and run by Deyzara.
Sitting back in her seat, she contemplated the hovering words. Circumstantial evidence to be sure, but right now it was all she had to go on. At best it was mere coincidence. But at the other end of the speculative spectrum, it was more than a little suggestive.
Three Deyzara outfits all prospecting in the same region. A disagreeable but highly competent outsider starts sniffing around the same area. Inexplicably, he vanishes. So does the team sent out to find him. Deyzara technicians are reported to have worked on both downed craft.
The Deyzara were known to all but worship commercial achievement and to strive for financial gain. That was a truism and not a generalization. The Deyzara themselves made no apology for it. But they had limits. Although she was not intimately familiar with its often arcane details, Matthias did not think the modern Deyzara code of business ethics extended to sanctioning the murder of rivals, much less that of individuals incidentally involved on the periphery of competition, like the missing rescue team. Besides, the lost crew included one of their own. Suffused with curiosity as well as information, she now began to run a few database searches of her own.
Insofar as she was able to tell, the individual known as Masurathoo was not and had never been in the employ of any of the three Deyzara businesses under suspicion. Did that make him a more likely target or less of one? What better way to throw an investigation into murderous sabotage off the track than by disposing of one of your own people? She decided Masurathoo’s participation could not be used to either confirm or deny Deyzaran involvement.