Free Taming the Wildcat (Sargosian Chronicles) by Bethany J. Barnes Mina Carter

a mallet.
    She completed the roll, her vision clearing as she rolled back level. Below her, right in her sights, was the bandit. She grinned, a feral expression. Pulling the trigger on a laser would have been fine if she had more room, but she didn’t. She didn’t have the distance. Stabbing her thumb down, she launched a mini-torpedo at close range and blew the thing to kingdom come. The backwash rocked her Eagle in its flight path. This close, there was nothing left of her enemy. Passing through the vapors, she looked up to thank Peters for the warning.
    “Thanks, Peters. I owe you for that one, mi amigo.” She heard the relief in her voice.
    He moved in next to her bird again, ready to join her in her crazy run at the Cutlass. “Yeah, yeah… I’ll add it to your tab,” came his smartass reply.
    “Bite me, Peters. I have no tab with you.” She opened her mouth to make another comment, but she didn’t get the chance. As she watched, he simply disappeared in a flash of red light. The Cutlass had hit him with a full torpedo.
    “ Kevin! ”
    She automatically took evasive action, her body and instincts taking over as she screamed at the top of her lungs. She screamed so hard her throat burned and her voice cracked. Caution thrown to the wind, she hit the asteroid field at full speed, weaving between the giant space rocks as if they were merely a slalom course back home.
    “You fucking bastards!”
    Even though she knew they couldn’t hear her, she screamed at the enemy as she bore down on them. Tears streamed down her cheeks unchecked.
    She came at the Cutlass like death from above, blasting their shield generators on each side of the bridge with deadly accuracy before peeling off again to disappear into the asteroid field. Hit and run. Fire and hide. Taking those out would remove the shield grid protecting the control center of the destroyer. Leaving a thick section of transparent aluminum between the captain and crew of the pirate ship and cold, hard space. She grinned, the expression humorless. She had two mini-torpedoes and a fully charged laser array. She could ride all the way in on a charge of fire and destruction.
    They were all gone. There was no ship to defend. No friends to protect. Just her and the soul-stealing need for vengeance. Low on solid-state ammunition to fire, she’d use the fighter itself as the final deadly torpedo.
    A final act, the least she could do to avenge them. There were too many pirates. She couldn’t win this. Not one against many. She would die like the rest. At least this way, she’d take the Cutlass and its senior crew out.
    Lining up for her kamikaze run, she hit the thrusters and let out a battle cry that would have done a Valkyrie proud. Her heart seized in her chest. These were the last moments of her life. Pain filled her, stealing her breath.
    She stared at the Cutlass in her sights, and a small voice in the back of her mind screamed at her. Screamed she hadn’t lost everything, that there was more in her life than her career. She gasped, Roz’s face foremost in her mind. It was said before one died their entire life flashed before their eyes. It didn’t. Instead, she saw a mix of memories and things that could be. Frozen, she saw Roz as he had been that last morning they’d been together. They lay on his bunk, skin against skin, just staring at each other. She’d memorized every single detail of his face and body. Looking into his eyes that morning, she had seen her future.
    Like then, it now played out in her mind in incredible detail. She saw how her life could and should have been. Waking up next to him every morning for the rest of her life. Kissing him goodnight after they’d fulfilled their passions. Cooking for him. Building a home together from scratch. Introducing him to her family and them welcoming him in typical King fashion. Boy, that would have been interesting, for them to find out he could easily best all of them without breaking a sweat.
    Perhaps