"WHAT DO YOU WANT, VITTIGA?"
Vittiga eyed the figure before him with disdain. He'd come here for a reason.
"Out of this deal." He said.
"Oh, you're worried? How can you be worried when all you need to do is erase all traces of our friends that are to follow to the Leviathan Burial Space - and those who'll come for Crichton."
He had no doubt of the consequences should he refuse.
"It couldn't be simpler. You'll be doing nothing that requires you to actually exert yourself."
"I don't want Shee'ladahalia harmed."
"She's not your concern." A pause. "She won't be. She doesn't like you. That's a dream you will never fulfil, so forget it."
Vittiga ground his teeth.
"Since I have no choice."
"You never did."
"What about the Leviathans themselves? Those coming?"
"Also not your concern." There was a solid clunk at his feet. "Leviathans are repurposed all the time. Pilots are malleable, replaceable."
"You don't care."
"No. Not at all. Nor should you. Just erase the erasable and fade away."
"That easy, is it?" He picked up the small bag, his fingers feeling the CP's in it.
"Easier." There was some faint menace to that though he could decipher just how he knew that. "For you." A breezy hand dismissed him. "Do it now."
Vittiga wanted to curse them, spit on them for exploiting his weaknesses, for finding out about them in the first place.
I'll do it. Then I'll expose you.
He wandered back to his quarters, spilled it on a table and began to count.
You won't stop me, not over my dead body.
Down in a little used hanger, dark and not on any station manifests, waited three Invidid symbiotes, sly and deadly, their shapeless forms encased in their globular armor.
Waiting on the ramp of its own ship, an insectoid killer called Hafta'lal'ta - wanted in four dozen systems, pitiless, lusting after death.
Most curious, a Se'em'aari Triad; legendary assassins, sisters, cold and remorseless, covered in deadly spikes that they could fling with an uncanny accuracy.
Bags of money - much larger, much heavier than Vittiga's - on a wheeled cart was kicked into their midst. Silently, they collected their share and dispersed to their ships. Moments later, the hanger was empty.
The only life in the hanger gazed out into the space before them, then spat at the magnetic field that keep the vacuum out. The glob flew out and instantly froze, to tumble away.
You won't be missed, butcher.
