#it’s your classic ‘military character doubts and therefore dislikes the rich genius character’ trope.

[mirafirstmate]

you have to understand that zacharias nelson and, by extension, mira inc. are neither inherently bad nor incompetent. nelson is shady, sure, what with his “do whatever it takes” attitude towards seeing project homer to its completion, but, ethics aside, he wants what anyone with their eyes turned to the future wants. to discover the undiscovered. to help advance society beyond the limits set by earth. nothing evil about it.

that said, max’s trust in his team is so absolute that the scepticism he holds for nelson’s practices and ulterior motives immediately causes him to assume that when things start going to shit ( a breakdown of comms, electrical issues out the ass, and, eventually, crew turning up dead ), nelson is first on his list of suspects despite being literal light years away from the skeld, safe at the heart of the company he’d built from the ground up.