The Ship Who Searched

Blurb

The Ship Who Searched is a science fiction novel by Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey. It is the third of seven books in the The Ship Who Sang series by McCaffrey and four other authors, and the only one by Lackey. It was first published as a serial in the monthly Amazing Stories, June to September, and as a paperback original by Baen Books in August 1992.
The Ship Who Searched follows the adventures of Hypatia Cade, whom an alien virus renders quadriplegic. Her only hope for a good life, free of the prison her body has become, is to enter the BB Program, named for Brain and Brawn. She does so, and becomes a brainship, a cyborg human being and interstellar spacecraft. The book begins when she contracts the virus at age seven and features her adventures as AH-1033 with her "brawn" Alex, the human partner whom she secretly loves.