Sabotage.
But why him? Sure, he had enemies, both personal and professional. He knew most of them by name and took perverse pride in the extent of the list he had accumulated. But though he went down that list from beginning to end and back again, he could not settle on the identity of a single person willing to go to the extreme of killing him. Priding itself on the maturity of its citizens, the government of the Commonwealth frowned on individuals who used murder to settle personal disputes. That did not mean killings were a thing of the past. After all, many of the Commonwealth’s citizens were human. But such killings were not frequent. They were even less common on outpost worlds like Fluva, where residents often had to rely on one another to survive, much less prosper.
Besides, most of his enemies were not unlike himself: straightforward and to the point in their dealings. Though they displayed many qualities, deviousness was not often among them. Anyone wanting him dead would like as not have confronted him face-to-face or at least tried to jump him on a town walkway or in his rented apartment at night. He stared at the several instrument panels whose interiors he had exposed to the light. This was too complex. It hinted at motives beyond a simple desire to see a certain Shadrach Hasselemoga dead.
Whoever they were, they had been very thorough. It wasn’t enough to ensure that his craft would crash well beyond any outpost of civilization. They had gone to the trouble of disabling the emergency beacon as well. No emergency beacon meant that even if anyone thought to come looking for him, they were going to have a hell of a time finding him in the tangled mass of vegetation and waterways that comprised the Viisiiviisii.