Liquidator Bhattacharya

Riya Bhattacharya is the officer the Combine sends when a holding goes insolvent and someone has to walk in, fire the staff, sell the machines, and ledger the loss. In fourteen years she closed forty-one subsidiaries. The board thinks of her as the end of difficult conversations.

They gave her the Going Concern as a promotion. She found it insulting. A capital ship is an operating business, and operating businesses do not need a liquidator. So she changed the target. She arrives with a manifest, prices each component of the enemy ship on the salvage market, and uses the least force that preserves resale value. She is sixty-one, unsmiling, and files her after-action reports as itemized profit and loss. The Combine stopped inviting her to banquets after she billed them for the hours.