[center][h1][color=A7E6EC]Howlite[/color][/h1][/center]
 
When the mission started Howlite was on top of the world with joy at being trusted with this mission. Her own ship! It was an honor for any gem to be trusted with one of Homeworld's vessels and for the duration of the mission it’s maintenance and piloting where all down to her. If she didn’t screw this up maybe she would get to keep it after she finished transporting the scientists and their cohort of troops to and from Earth.
 
[hr]
 
It was about 30 seconds before the alarms started that Howlite knew she fucked up. 
 
She was in the middle of the main control room of the ship, standing motionless and plugged into control console with her mechanical limbs. It was an old ship, and she was sure she had thoroughly checked through everything before they set off, but apparently the ship’s anti-grav was even more antiquated than she had initially thought. After millennia of work it just couldn't handle the type of approach she had plotted and as a result had overheated from the strain of stopping them from plunging down the gravity well. As it was they were currently plummeting into the atmosphere uncontrollably as Howlite tried to get the ship to restart the anti-grav system, the maintenance drones of the ship dumping foam over the red hot system to try and cool it down.
 
It was once her attempts to salvage the descent into anything remotely looking like a normal landing that she let the alarms through and panic spread throughout the ship. She was so going to be shattered for this. She was in the middle of dramatically going down with her ship when Chromite, one of the soldiers, broke her from her self pity by shouting at everyone. 
 
[color=darkgray]"Howlite, is there anything you can do?  It would be best if we landed on wet ground!"[/color]
 
It was kind of inspiring to see her and Moonstone the try to protect the others with their shields, as if they could simply parry the planet towards which they were falling. It reminded her that she couldn’t let them all die from her incompetence. She responded with as much confidence as she could muster.

“[color=A7E6EC]Working on it! The earth has lots of water, if I angle the Ship right we can splash down instead of smash down![/color]”
 
That and try to cool the anti-grav down for one last push. There was little chance of that while they roared through the upper atmosphere, the hull super-heating from reentry but once they had started to decelerate she finally managed to cool it down enough with all the remaining foam to use it to change their descend from a steep plummet to a more horizontal glide. They still had way too much momentum and the reactor explode about halfway through the maneuver, but they were going to make it, though there wouldn’t be much ship left after this.

“[color=A7E6EC]Hold on to something and brace for impact! make sure you protect your gem![/color]”