Ves immediately suspected their uninvited guests as the ones responsible, but ruled them out just as quickly.
Though the worshippers of Haatumak exhibited freaky abilities, they had kept themselves quiet over the weeks, never making any moves that suggested that something invisible lurked amid the Vandals.
Going out of their way to kill a random mech designer that the Vandals picked up along the way didn't benefit them at all. Not only would they alert the Vandals that a presence had boarded the ship that could elude every means of detection, they also plainly lacked a motive to kill this specific individual.
Why kill someone as irrelevant as Mr. Kichiro when they could easily assassinate Major Verle or even Ves?
Of course, cultists being what they were, they hardly adhered to logic in the first place. They might have decided to kill Kichiro on a whim because they could or because they wanted to frighten the Vandals.