Instead of directly accessing the internal variable that holds the version manager (_version) you should go through the front door. Here is how I get the version manager, default version, and un object in most of my scripts:
# Get the version and Utility Network reference
messages.addMessage(f"Connecting to {version_service_url}")
version_manager = VersionManager(version_service_url, gis=gis, flc=feature_layer_collection)
messages.addMessage(f"Connecting to version: {version_name}")
default_version = version_manager.get(version_name)
utility_network_manager = default_version .utility