Free Ally by Karen Traviss

Is that c’naatat ?”
    â€œIt is, isn’t it?” Shan was staring at the display, not at Shapakti. “That’s what you showed me on Ouzhari.”
    Ade allowed himself a moment of distraction. He’d expected to be underwhelmed when he finally saw c’naatat, but he wasn’t. It astounded him. As Shapakti increased the magnification, it unwound into brushes within brushes like a fractal. It was infinite. It was like looking at a galaxy and seeing it break up into stars and worlds.
    â€œBut what’s the host?” asked Aras. He didn’t seem amazed. Maybe he’d seen it before. “Is it bezeri or sheven ?”
    Shan stepped back from leaning over Shapakti, shaking her head, mouth set in that position that showed she’d thrust her lower jaw forward. It usually preceded clenched fists, a sudden turn on her heel and a fast march towards the nearest door. Ade edged slowly towards the exit to head her off as casually as he could.
    â€œI don’t know which is worse, immortal predators or bezeri,” she said. “That explains the lights. You think Lindsay came ashore and a sheven grabbed her?”
    â€œIt’s bezeri,” said Shapakti. He tilted the transparent tray and the image enlarged several times. Icons that Ade couldn’t begin to identify appeared in a row on the right-hand side and Shapakti tapped at them with long spider fingers, summoning up more cell-like images. Ade hadn’t even seen him insert any samples. It was incomprehensible technology. “There are distinctly bezeri features as well as c’naatat, isenj and human.”
    â€œNo sheven ?” said Shan, as if that would make matters worse than they already were. She was right, though: it would. Those bloody things were everywhere already, and giving them extra superpowers was bound to end in tears. “You sure? Because the last thing we need is them chomping on wildlife here and spreading it further.”
    â€œIt’s a native organism,” said Aras. “But it hasn’t spread here. It hasn’t infected native carnivores, and if it could do that easily then I’d have seen evidence of it by now among flying species like the stabtails.”
    â€œBezeri are carnivores. Omnivores, anyway.”
    â€œBut they only caught it through a human vector in the marine environment. I rarely guess, Shan Chail, but if I didn’t infect them by accident in five hundred years, then this may well be the result of a deliberate act, the same way that Rayat and Lindsay acquired bezeri characteristics.”
    It was just the thing to make Shan blow a gasket. But she settled for going white and angry instead. “If I find she’s pissed around with the ecosystems here, I might lose my legendary patience.”
    Shapakti looked up for a moment. “But you have none.”
    â€œI know. It’s humor.”
    â€œOh.” Shapakti pondered, head cocked. “Do you think she’s foolish enough to infect them deliberately?”
    It begged the obvious answer. Shan gave it: Ade winced.
    â€œTwo out of three c’naatat hosts in this room have done just that,” she said, “and they’re both a lot smarter and a lot more disciplined than Lindsay fucking Neville.”
    â€œIntent makes no difference.”
    â€œOh, it does. It makes me angrier.”
    Shapakti switched topics with surprising tact, or maybe it was just that wess’har habit of darting from one topic to the next. “There are many structures in the cells that correspond to nothing I have on record. There might well be sheven elements in this and many other things. But I can say that this is very similar to the bezeri material we’ve gathered.”
    Shan stood with fists on hips, seeming to have forgotten the door. “Okay, let’s scope the worst nuclear accident here.We’ve got c’naatat bezeri material ashore. That’s two new problems—bezeri