Found: Sci fi dangerous nanobots in space

A friend is trying to track down a book, and based on her description, I also want to read it. There are two characters on a salvage ship traveling in space with a cat. Main protagonist may be female or gender-fluid. They find sentient nanobots that are dangerous. Ships are also sentient, and move through space by generating a large field. There may be a sentient tree that acts as a judge. Book may be part of a series.

>1 SusanBraxton: I wonder if your friend might be talking about the Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Liaden books, which do have a sentient tree (though I don't remember it being a judge) and sentient ships and cats. In The Gathering Edge two pilots and a cat are rescued by a sentient ship and its crew.

If this isn't the book/series your friend is looking for, it still might be a series that the two of you would like.

>2 vorkosigan: thank you—this does sound like a good series.
I have heard from my friend that she has found the book she was seeking. It was one of the two books from Elizabeth Bear’s White Space series (either Ancestral Night or Machine ).