A figure loomed nearby, sliding forward through the shadows with a glint in its eye. Szarka had overheard most of the conversation, and it was clear that one person’s loss would be her gain.
“What indeed?” Szarka appeared in front of Jonesy in a flash, as if she’d materialized out of the crowd.
Jonesy nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden appearance of this smiling blonde person in front of her. Okay, so she’d been talking kind of loudly, but she didn’t think anyone had heard her over the din of the crowd. The helmsman blinked. “What? I mean like, what do you want?”
“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, and as someone who has also just been cruelly cast aside by their partner in favor of romantic entanglement, well… it feels like fate has brought us together, new friend!” Szarka smiled a bit wider than the situation called for and clapped her broken bits of PADD together as she looked the other woman up and down.
Returning the visual examination, Jonesy’s eyes narrowed. This woman could be her sister: a bit tall, blonde, impish grin. If she was also a pilot, Jonesy would have really freaked out. “Yeah, I’m in need of a copilot, as I’m sure you heard, friend. You fly?” She was skeptical, but desperate at this point; she’d take just about anyone to sit in that seat so she could enter the race. Even some random stranger who looked like she was related to her.
“Do I fly?” Szarka tapped one of the PADD halves on her chin as she considered how to answer. “Well, I commune on a deeply intimate level with the computer who tells the machine how to fly, so on an associative level then yes, I fly! Though I prefer to co-fly.”
She stretched, as if releasing the tension of her admission. “My partner Zamora is the real pilot. But who needs her decades of experience when you have someone who’s already shown up?”
Szarka put both halves of the broken PADD in one hand and stretched out the other to Jonesy. “I’m Robin Szarka of the Babylon. Pleased to meet you, new partner!” she said with a flash of a smile and a healthy dash of assumption.
Jonesy blinked, then gave Szarka a cheeky smile (which was the only kind of smile she was capable of making). She didn’t believe in kismet or anything like that, but she couldn’t have asked for a better reprieve for the race.
“Robin Jones of the Sausalito – hey! Another Robin!” Throwing a grin at Szarka, she took the other Robin’s hand and gave it a good solid shake. “I’m a helmsman on the Sausalito, and I used to race in the desert back home, so I’m pretty experienced at flying small craft. Maybe not decades experienced, but still! I’m a pilot!”
This was perfect! Who needed that dumb Cowboy anyway?
Szarka laughed, and finished off the handshake with a fistbump. “Like I said, Robin. Fate!”
