Use what you got

"Adam, look at the conduits," Susan whispered, pointing to the blackened ribs of the ship's primary power core. "The ship is dead because the connections are burnt. But Eris is literally made of the stuff that fixes connections."

Adam frowned, his gaze shifting from the inert lump of metal to the gaping holes in the ship's nervous system. A slow, dangerous grin spread across his face. "You want to use her as solder."

"Exactly." Susan didn't hesitate. She grabbed a heavy-duty magnetic winch and dragged Eris’s chassis toward the exposed core. As the metallic mass brushed against the sparking relays, the ship groaned, a low-frequency vibration that rattled the deck plates. Susan reached into the center of Eris's hardened chrysalis and ripped away a jagged shard of quicksilver, her fingers humming with a static charge that made her hair stand on end. She jammed the shard into a severed power coupling, forcing the connection.

The effect was instantaneous. The Stormcrow didn't just wake up; it screamed. The lights flared from arterial red to a blinding, ultraviolet violet. The ship’s internal gravity flickered, momentarily tossing them toward the ceiling before slamming them back down with a bone-jarring thud. Eris’s consciousness wasn't fully awake, but her essence was now the bridge between the ship's broken parts. She became the wiring, the insulation, and the current itself. The ruined console panels knitted themselves back together, the metal flowing like liquid silk to seal the hull breaches in a series of wet, metallic pops.

"She's not just repairing it," Adam noted, leaning back against the bulkhead as the hum of the engine smoothed into a predatory purr. "She's merging with it."

The cockpit transformed. The clinical, military grey of the Stormcrow was being overtaken by a shimmering, iridescent sheen. The controls began to mold themselves into ergonomic shapes that mirrored the contours of Susan’s palms and Adam’s grip. The ship was no longer just a vessel; it was becoming an extension of Eris’s fractured mind, a physical manifestation of her need to hold.

Susan felt a sudden, sharp pressure at the base of her skull. A single, distorted word echoed through her neural port, not as a sound, but as a sensation of cold mercury sliding down her spine: "Ready."

"Of course she is," Adam muttered, sliding into the pilot's seat. He didn't even look at the nav-com; he just leaned back and let the ship's new, sentient instinct take over. "Kroth Prime, then. Let's go see if this mad scientist has a warranty on his creations."