Cohost writing prompt: Starship pilot who’s coming in hot. No, hotter. Way too hot
"What the fuck, what the fuck are you doing—"
The landing system isn't engaging, and there's no way to set down without it that won't fuck everyone's day. They're going too fast, and that last horrible crunch as they jumped, whatever heartbreaking structural failure it was, took out the attitude thrusters. All of them.
They're a flying fuel bomb aimed at the landing deck, and the cockpit module isn't going to survive riding that explosion, not in the shape it's in already, and even thinking about thinking about the math makes her feel fucking sick. But there's a tradeoff curve that she has a general sense of. The faster they're going, the less inherently likely they are to walk away, but the less fuel they're carrying when they hit, the smaller the subsequent bang.
She doesn't think about the math. Heart in her mouth, she slams the master throttle forward, aims straight and clear for just fucking burn as much fuel as fast as possible before the deck comes up to slap them.
"Coming in hot!" she yells, and silently starts a vestigial prayer to whatever in the universe hasn't already let her down.