Reunion

Eight-gees. For a brief moment, nine. Watching her space-track and Starsight and her attitude and her skin temps all at once, Joslyn dove nose first for her enemy. The two ships closed at a terrifying rate, dead for each other. Split seconds from a crash, Joslyn spun ship one last time. There was no radar to guide her; she aimed her fusion flame by luck and feel.

And Starsight's hull was clawed open by the heat of a sun's core. The tongues of starflame sliced through to the hydrogen tanks, bursting their pressure seals—the escaping hydrogen flaring into fusion itself. A tenth of a second later, what was left of the Nihilist ship exploded.

Reunion shook from stem to stern as she dove through the cloud of debris. Tiny fragments of the enemy ship bounced off her hull with terrifying reports, and suddenly Reunion was in the midst of atmospheric entry, pointed in the wrong attitude, moving at far too high a speed.

Joslyn held the engines to eight-gees, and felt their speed begin to die. Slowly, painfully, Reunion clawed its way back up into the dark of space, and scrabbled into a stable orbit. Joslyn cut the engines and started breathing again, staring at a status board with more red lights than green on it.

That was as close to ramming another ship as she ever wanted to get.