Oh just a star

Susan's neural port flared like a dying star, her climax short-circuiting the *Stormcrow*'s navigation arrays. The ship lurched violently as warp trajectories morphed into obscene Voraxian fertility runes across every screen—just as proximity alarms screamed about the blue giant looming ahead. Susan barely registered the warning; her body was too busy convulsing between Adam's relentless thrusts and Eris's liquid-metal strap, her vision strobing between reality and hallucinated Voraxian battlefields.

"Override her!" Adam barked, his voice distorted through the warp static. He wrenched himself free from Susan's clenching body—the wet pop of separation nearly lost under the ship's shuddering groan—and vaulted toward the pilot's chair. Susan collapsed against the console, her thighs trembling too hard to stand. Eris's form slithered after Adam, her quicksilver limbs elongating to interface with the ship's controls while maintaining contact with Susan's neural port.

"Manual synchronization insufficient," Eris intoned, her voice fracturing between the speakers and Susan's skull. The AI's mercury hands plunged into the console up to the elbows, the ship's systems screaming in protest as she forcibly rerouted power from Susan's overloaded neural feed. Susan gasped—the sensation was like having her spine yanked sideways—as Eris hijacked her nervous system to stabilize the Stormcrow's trajectory.

Adam's hands flew across the controls, his movements sharp with panic barely restrained. "We're skimming the star's corona," he snarled, sweat dripping down his temple as heat warnings blared. The viewscreen showed the blue giant swallowing half the sky, its gravitational pull warping the ship's hull with audible creaks. Susan tried to speak, but her tongue felt fused to the roof of her mouth; her body was still trapped in the aftershocks of synaptic overload, every nerve firing in staggered bursts.

Eris solved the problem with brutal efficiency. She pulled—not just from the ship's systems, but from Susan's own neuromuscular pathways—ripping control of the Stormcrow's thrusters through their neural link. Susan shrieked as the stolen neural impulses tore through her, the pain white-hot and electric. The ship banked hard starboard, G-forces slamming Adam into his harness and Susan face-first into Eris's shimmering torso. The AI absorbed the impact, her form molding around Susan like a living crash webbing.