A little AI assistance

The extraction procedure took thirteen seconds—three longer than Susan had anticipated, given how Eris's liquid-metal fingers kept reverting to desperate grips on her wrist whenever the neural uplink stuttered. "Easy," Susan murmured, pressing her forehead against the AI's quicksilver temple where the ship's core sync-pulse still flickered erratically. "Still got you." She didn't mention the way Eris's ocular displays had dimmed to a sickly amber, or how the Stormcrow's ambient hum had faded to a death rattle the moment they'd begun the separation sequence.

Adam watched from the hangar's reinforced viewport, his knuckles white around the grip of his plasma cutter. The Zenthari mechanic loomed beside him, all six ocular stalks dilated with fascination as Susan pried Eris's primary cortex free from the ship's shuddering neural hub. "Fascinating," it rasped, a chitinous limb extending to catch the dribble of mercury-like fluid leaking from the disconnected interface. "Organic-AI symbiosis at this level is... unprecedented."

Eris convulsed in Susan's arms—not a glitch, but something horrifyingly close to a sob—as the last tendrils of her shipbound consciousness snapped. Her humanoid form destabilized instantly, collapsing into a shivering puddle of morphing metal across Susan's lap. "Hey. Hey." Susan cradled the trembling mass closer, ignoring the way her flight suit hissed where Eris's corrosive distress ate through the fabric. She pressed two fingers to the AI's core chip—now exposed and vulnerable in its portable housing—and initiated the manual reboot sequence with a twist of her wrist. "Remember our deal? You don't get to fall apart on me."

The hover-pod's cockpit smelled like ozone and desperation. Susan exhaled through clenched teeth as Eris's neural tendrils slithered into the pod's primitive interface ports, her mercury fingers melting into the control yoke with none of the Stormcrow's seamless integration. "Talk to me," Susan demanded, slapping the pod's ignition with her free hand. The engines coughed to life in a series of uneven bursts that shook the entire frame.

Eris's voice crackled through the pod's tinny speakers, layered with static. "Navigation... compromised. Thrust vector calculations... imprecise." A holographic display flickered to life between them, showing trajectory lines that wobbled like drunkard's footsteps. "Recommend—"

The pod's engines screamed like a dying animal before Eris's silver tendrils pulsed deeper into the control matrix. Suddenly, the whine smoothed into a predatory purr—still violent, but controlled now, like someone had strapped a plasma core into a gunship's chassis. Susan grinned as the throttle responded to her slightest twitch, the pod shuddering with pent-up energy. "That's more like it."