I'll make a prediction.
It's all an insurance scam. If we could see the cargo manifest I'm betting it would read like Aladdins cave, but the cargo pods are 99% empty. The cargo handlers knew this and had to be dealt with. Raan Corsen found the proof and went on the run. The new Director of Metadrive also finds out, he snuffs it too, and the auditor that finds some shady accounting is sacked and disappears.
The ship was insured to the max, then sent on a fools errand into a sector of space that was permit locked (never to be found), but the alien barnacles in that area mean pilots start sniffing around a sector that normally would have been ignored. Ooops, ship gets discovered. Insurance underwriters start getting suspicious, and it's messy cover-up time as a disgraced senators daughter threatens to blow the lid off the whole mess and cost some powerful people an awful lot of money and prestige.
Sirius Corp? They heard about the scam and saw a nice chance to get some easy cash on a company going under and possibly some new tech involving meta alloys and a new stardrive, but that's blown up in their faces too.
If they can get the independents to silence the "Terrorist" with a piddling bounty, then there's a chance to sweep the scam under the carpet, and back to business as usual for the powers.
It's all an insurance scam. If we could see the cargo manifest I'm betting it would read like Aladdins cave, but the cargo pods are 99% empty. The cargo handlers knew this and had to be dealt with. Raan Corsen found the proof and went on the run. The new Director of Metadrive also finds out, he snuffs it too, and the auditor that finds some shady accounting is sacked and disappears.
The ship was insured to the max, then sent on a fools errand into a sector of space that was permit locked (never to be found), but the alien barnacles in that area mean pilots start sniffing around a sector that normally would have been ignored. Ooops, ship gets discovered. Insurance underwriters start getting suspicious, and it's messy cover-up time as a disgraced senators daughter threatens to blow the lid off the whole mess and cost some powerful people an awful lot of money and prestige.
Sirius Corp? They heard about the scam and saw a nice chance to get some easy cash on a company going under and possibly some new tech involving meta alloys and a new stardrive, but that's blown up in their faces too.
If they can get the independents to silence the "Terrorist" with a piddling bounty, then there's a chance to sweep the scam under the carpet, and back to business as usual for the powers.