The pair were nearly finished loading up the rented two-seater fighter craft. Szarka was out of uniform, wearing a sturdy pair of cargo pants with isolinear chips, rods, small PADDS, and other backups of backups they might need if anything happened to their subspace receiver or sensors. The client they were renting the vehicle from was in on a percentage of the prize and would have no reason to give them a faulty ship, but Szarka wasn’t willing to blindly trust a stranger when it came to spacecraft.
Jonesy looked nearly done with her own pre-flight checks, and the satisfied look on her face was reassuring. Especially since the flag was set to drop in five minutes.
“She’s got good bones, right? You ready to push this fighter to its limits?”
“I sure am! This baby looks to have enough juice to make some really good speeds.” Jonesy was also out of uniform, also wearing cargo pants, though she didn’t have nearly the amount of tech on her that Szarka had: just enough to soup up the little fighter should it need the boost. She also had her favorite flight helmet with her. “Let’s saddle up and go!”
“Wait! Before the race starts, we’ve gotta figure out what to call her! The client just has the fighter registered as a bunch of numbers, but she needs a name.”
Jonesy blinked as she was donning her helmet. “A name?” Every good ship, even a fighter craft, needed a name. It gave some sort of supernatural juju to the craft and the pilot and crew. She thought and thought, then it came to her. “How ’bout Rockin’ Robin?” she grinned at Szarka. “For two Robins!”
Szarka grinned. “Appealing to my self-absorbed side always works,” she said in approval. Leaning over the PADD, she added the name as the final piece of data in their racing registration. It would have been nice to paint it on the outside somewhere, but the crunch of time wouldn’t allow it. Besides, she could almost feel the name embedding itself in the console that lie somewhere beneath the nest of wires. It was a part of the ship now, one way or another.
Following Jonesy’s lead, Szarka donned her own boring and rarely-used helmet. Then she clipped the life support belt around her waist just as she’d seen Jonesy do. A full flight suit would have been safer, but in an environment where rescue was guaranteed to be moments away, it was a serviceable and reliable bit of technology.
Finally, she pulled the map of the route up on their console and leaned back in her seat, watching eagerly as the numbers ticked down. “Alright Jonesy, let’s get ready to make some memories.”
