I'm looking for the name of a scifi short story.
I'm pretty sure it is in one of the 'Years Best in Science Fiction' but I have like ten of them and they are huge so I don't know which one it is in.
My memory of it is hazy but it is something like: a story that starts with two young people on a boat, and ends with them fighting against each other in space combat decades later.
The general concept behind the story is that regardless of how much you want something, or how skilled you are, there are the unchanging laws of physics at play.
If the delta V between the two ships is such, then the pilots skill won't matter; you can't break the laws of physics. The main character can see the other ship, but he knows he will never close the distance, he can only watch as it recedes, and the suggestion is that these two people started their trajectories on that boat so long ago, their delta V even then was off, so he was destined to not catch the ship, his destiny written so long ago. I think maybe they were in a race on the boat and one had the wind behind him or her. Not sure. I think they were both trainees at the time. I don't recall them being on earth...I think they were aliens or a far-flung future society.
It was mostly a meditation on the nature of conservation of momentum and the entropy and destiny taking decades to play out.
I may have misremembered some of the details, but I think I got the gist right. Any hints would be great.
