Free Ally by Karen Traviss Page A

contaminated with c’naatat, and bezeri ashore.”
    â€œBezeri always did come ashore,” Aras said quietly. “They used podships to explore the beaches. You’ve seen the memorial to the first of them who did this and died in the attempt. They can survive out of water for a brief time, if you recall what happened to the beached infant Surendra Parekh found.”
    Ade did, and Shan did too. Ade wondered if he’d look back on that incident one day and see it as the point at which human-wess’har relations really went to rat shit. Silly cow, Parekh: she thought the beached bezeri was dead. It certainly was after she’d finished with it.
    Shan didn’t deviate. “Yeah, but they didn’t bloody walk ashore and stroll around with a picnic lunch, did they? You said you saw a large gelatinous shape moving around in the marshes and going back into the water.”
    â€œYes, isan. Something has changed.”
    â€œI’ll say. Walking bezeri. C’naatat bezeri.”
    Shan turned for the door. Ade risked stepping in front of her.
    â€œWhere you off to, then, Boss?”
    She looked him in the eye, all hostile out-of-my-way ice. Then her expression softened as if she’d suddenly recognized him in a crowd of strangers and was glad of it.
    â€œIf you ask Rayat if he knows the time, he’ll just say yes.” She edged forward half a pace, impatient. “I want another chat with him just in case there’s something he forgot to tell me.”
    â€œI’ll give you a hand.”
    â€œAde, I’m not exactly new to interrogations.”
    â€œI just don’t want you getting upset.”
    She almost smiled, but put her left hand firmly on his elbow to steer him aside. “You’re too nice for your own good sometimes, you know that?”
    Ade knew that. But he also knew he had his father in him, and that—given the opportunity—he could make Rayat wish that he could die. He let Shan pass and watchedher stride down the passageway, longing for her to drop the act and show how broken she really was by what she’d had to do.
    She had to be grieving. He needed to comfort her, to feel some kind of bloody use for a change. When she was out of sight and he turned his attention back to the lab, Aras was staring at the specimen captured in the tray, oblivious.
    â€œInfection control is a difficult thing,” said Shapakti, jerking Ade back to the here and now. “If we assume the worst, then—”
    Aras didn’t take his eyes off the tray. “ Shan Chail will always assume the worst.”
    â€œThen the worst,” said Shapakti, “is that the bezeri become infected and that they spread c’naatat, and eventually destroy the ecology of the planet. But there are few of them, and it may well be possible to stop the spread.”
    Aras wasn’t prone to outbursts. Apart from his raging grief when Shan died, he was almost mild mannered in that oddly bipolar wess’har way, patient to the point of being dull and then flipping without warning into a ruthless killer. Ade knew. He’d tracked isenj troops with him: and wess’har really didn’t take prisoners.
    â€œWhat has it all been for?” Aras asked. There was an almost infrasonic rumble in his voice, right on the threshold of Ade’s hearing. “The last five centuries, what has it all been for? What do I have to do now, kill them? After defending them for so many years?”
    He turned so sharply that his long dark braid whipped around almost horizontally as he stormed out. Ade’s instinct was to go after him. Shapakti held out a restraining arm but stopped short of grabbing Ade.
    â€œIt’s snowballing.” Ade wasn’t sure what he would say to Aras when he caught up with him. Yeah, you went into exile for them, and we kicked off a war over them, and you executed your best friend because of them—and now we might have to kill them.