Decorative coral being what it is, and economics being what it is, the Halkas had ended up selling, trading, and otherwise distributing the damn stuff across the whole galaxy. Unfortunately, one touch of unprotected skin against that coral was enough to pick up a few polyp hooks, which eventually grew into full polyps and then a polyp colony, settling in at the base of the victim’s brain. Once there, the new Modhran mind segment could watch and listen through his new walker’s senses, whispering suggestions to guide the person’s actions in order to benefit whatever the Modhri’s goals were at a given moment. Should the mood strike him, the Modhri could also take complete control of his unwitting host’s body, blacking out the host’s own consciousness and leaving him only a puzzling memory gap when it was all over.

The Modhri’s ultimate goal was to fill the galaxy with himself, which meant filling the galaxy with walkers. And up to now, he’d been doing pretty well for himself.

Or he had until the Spiders had tumbled to his existence. There’d been some false starts and some false assumptions, on both sides, as to exactly what was going on. But that had all been sorted out, and as of right now we all pretty much knew where we stood.

On paper, at least, where we stood was pretty depressing. On one side were the Modhran coral outposts, thousands of them, and his coopted walker allies, thousands if not millions of them. On the other side were the Spiders and the Chahwyn, species which were both constitutionally incapable of actual fighting, plus a handful of individuals who didn’t have any such psychological shortcomings.

Two of that handful were Bayta and me.

The odds were frankly ridiculous. But despite that, Bayta and I and our allies had done remarkably well. Our latest trick, pulling a young Human girl named Rebekah and her wildcard cargo out from under the Modhri’s collective nose on the Human colony world of New Tigris, had been one of our greatest successes, and had no doubt irritated the Modhri no end.