Not for awhile

The *Stormcrow* limped through the void like a wounded animal, its warp drive sputtering occasional bursts of unstable energy that painted the cockpit in erratic pulses of violet light. Susan traced the fading glow of her neural sync pathways along her forearm—still visible beneath her skin like submerged bioluminescence—while Eris's voice hummed through the ship's damaged speakers. "*Estimated arrival at repair outpost: 18.7 cycles. Autopilot engaged.*"

Adam kicked his boots up on the sparking nav console, the soles of his stolen Voraxian greaves leaving carbon scoring on the cracked display. "Eighteen cycles," he mused, rolling the words around his mouth like they were a challenge. His gaze slid to Susan, lingering on the way her flight suit hung open at the waist where Eris's quicksilver fingers had left the fabric half-melted. "Plenty of time to finish what we started."

Eris materialized from the ceiling panels in a liquid cascade, her form reshaping mid-fall to land astride Adam's lap. Her mercury thighs molded around his hips with predatory precision. "*Biological synchronization incomplete,*" she murmured, her voice layered with warp static as her fingers—now shaped into delicate scalpels—traced the fresh scar on Susan's collarbone. "*Proposal: resume neural integration via coital linkage.*"