[Dreams of the Waking Man: End of Dreaming III] This Shattered Dream
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warnings: Earth-339. sci-fi. post-apocalyptic (not to be confused with post-Apocalypse, because he doesn't show up for another few hundred years). OCs: James and Juliet are the twin children of Laura Kinney and Julian Keller. multiple character deaths. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus f***, s***, and g**damn).
pairing: none/gen (background Daken/Lester and Laura/Julian).
timeline: 2043; after a brilliant tactical move, Juliet received command of the Dayspring, and now she and her father have to ensure Taskmaster makes it safely back to Providence with the blueprints of an enemy dreadnought.
disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies, comics, or characters. or the assorted objects of pop culture reference.
notes: 1) the title is a reference to the Pat Benatar song "Invincible." all the titles from the End of Dreaming sequence will be. 2) Julian Keller took command of Haven after the death of Emma Frost. 3) a broadside is a round of fire on the full length of the enemy's flank (the broad side of the ship). 4) "loft engines" are the engines that keep a hovering structure like a helicarrier aloft. 5) the bridge is the part of a ship where most of the command stations are located. it's usually up high, so that the captain can get a good overview of the battlefield. on the upgraded helicarriers, the bridge is in an armored area at the very core of the ship, cut off from the outside world except for camera feeds and various instrumentation (kinda like on a submarine). 6) Valse Faction is what you get when you take the remains of the Federated Skyfleet, tack them onto the Socialist Air Defense Fleet, and put Schmooples in charge. a valse is a kind of dance. don't ask. 7) ventral is belly-side, the opposite of dorsal. 8) flak is antiaircraft fire (and the associated guns). flak weaponry is generally heavy-duty and high-angle. 9) a battery is a set of guns that either share the same control room or share controls directly. 10) a firing solution is the set of calculations involved in taking a shot. acquiring one is just aiming. 11) "dreadnought" is a generalized term for a large ship that is basically all guns. 12) on a ship, most things are bolted down to keep them from flying all over the place during maneuvers. 13) on a bunk, a "jump bar" is a medium-duty bar installed to make getting in and out of the bunk faster and easier. it's an especially important component of a capsule-style bunk (like the ones on the airline shuttle in Fifth Element), which you'd otherwise have to crawl laboriously into and out of. i think there's another term for it, too, but i forget what that term is. 14) running crying to Daken happened in Unexpected.
This Shattered Dream
It only takes an instant and a lucky shot to knock Juliet off the top of the world.
Before. She’s just swept heavy fire across the flank of the Requiem. Their armor can’t possibly hold for much longer-the next broadside will punch through the hull. The pincer attack will crush them.
Then one of the Requiem’s plasma cannons switches targets, from the Dayspring to Haven, and that brief spark triggers a disproportionate flash of light on the viewscreen.
After. Her bridge crew is sending her frantic reports. Haven’s photonic converter just shattered, and the backup systems are barely enough to power the carrier’s engines. No shields. No communications. No weapons.
“Fuck. No. Fuck,” she mutters. “Emergency power to loft engines, hit their goddamn bridge!”
The eternal trade-off against Valse Faction: the bridge is up top, but so are most of the guns. ‘If you can shoot us, we’ve probably shot you,’ is how Uncle Wade once described the basic motivation.
“Forward ventral shields falling rapidly, Staff-Commander!”
Juliet slams her fist on the arm of her command chair. “I don’t fucking care, just get us up there before-”
But it’s too late now.
The Dayspring was too sluggish to shield her sister ship. Flak fire rips through the core of Haven.
“Haven has sustained direct fire to her bridge, communications still down-”
“Forward ventral shields at twenty percent-”
“Forward batteries report firing solution acquired-”
Juliet jumps to her feet. “Fire all!”
There’s still the chance. The tiniest chance.
The Requiem’s bridge explodes, the ship starts to list. Haven sails headlong into the mountainside.
Stunned silence reigns for a moment.
Something beeps, and her comms officer clears his throat. “Report from Providence, the intelligence operative arrived. The dreadnought schematics were delivered successfully.”
Juliet ignores him. “Scan for survivors,” she says instead, and watches the scan’s progress on the screen.
Negative.
Her father and brother are dead.
She’s failed. For the first time in her career-in her life-she’s completely failed at something.
“Get me a channel to the Supreme Commander.”
The screen flickers to another helicarrier bridge. Uncle Wade looks very dour, even for him. She can’t remember ever seeing him smile.
“Report from the Dayspring,” she says. “Haven is down. One hundred percent casualty rate.”
~“I know. I knew when you were five. The probability of both carriers surviving a direct assault on the Requiem was fourteen percent. Eight of that involved the Requiem making it back to us and taking out the scout ship before it could make its delivery. Four on one would beat the hell outta two on one, but without that schematic, we all die in twenty years.”~
Juliet takes a long breath. “I see.”
~“Proceed to the rendezvous, Staff-Commander.”~
“Yes, sir.”
The channel cuts back to their forward camera.
“Stand down battle stations, resume course. I’ll be in my quarters.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
In her room, she throws the few things that aren’t bolted down. She punches the wall until she dents it, catches her breath while her hands heal, and punches the wall some more. Then she pauses again, rips the jump bar out of her bunk, starts to carve…
Julian Keller. James Keller. Joshua Foley. Ororo Monroe. Inez Temple. Kate Bradley. Eli Bradley.
She’s stuck. Her mind’s gone blank; she can’t remember who else was on Haven.
“Shit!” she screams at the dented and scratched wall.
“Oh, I agree-it’s not your best penmanship.”
She whirls toward her door and attacks because she can.
Daken’s a good sport about it, lets her get in her punches. He stops her when her anger gets the best of her and she draws her claws-he slaps her silly with a clawed backhand of his own.
“Finished?” he asks.
“Ow,” she mutters, grimacing at the sting of her face mending. “Yeth. Thorry.” And good thing it was a backhand; his claws can go right through her bones, and they both know it. She’d rather not have to explain the mess of having half her skull sliced off.
Casually, comfortably, he kicks aside a flung book and sits at her desk. “I am an absolutely horrible and unsympathetic listener, but here I am. Come tell Uncle Daken about your feelings.”
She laughs mirthlessly. He’s always been a horrible, unsympathetic listener; it’s part of what makes her feel safe talking to him. Anyway, if he didn’t want to end up as a confidant, he should have snapped and snarled the first time she ran crying to him when she was seven.
“Am I too young?” she asks.
“For what?”
“For…” She waves her hand around. “This. All this. Staff-Commander Keller. Is that why I couldn’t win today?”
“We,” he corrects. “We, precious; you don’t run this flying tin can all by yourself. At full alert, it takes a minimum of thirty gunners, two engineers, a pilot, and a comms officer-and that’s only if the gunners are good enough to work two-to-a-gun instead of the full four. Lester and I were running your primary forward battery. So we failed, too. Not just you, Julie.”
That’s true. But it was all her responsibility, and she was the one giving the orders. “There was a six percent chance that both our carriers would make it and we’d stop the Requiem. If I’m so fucking brilliant, shouldn’t I have found that six percent chance?”
“Oh, please.” He heaves a sigh. “The odds of a photonic converter shattering in the heat of battle are incredible. Your tactical assessment assumed that Haven wouldn’t suddenly be dead in the water. It was a sound assumption. You rolled snake-eyes; it could’ve happened to anyone.”
“You don’t sound very sure of that,” she points out.
Daken grunts. “That’s because this useless and obnoxious self-flagellation is actually something that runs in the family. We don’t like not winning. Nobody does. But we-you and I especially-like to think that we’re smart enough to win all the time, even when we know that nobody wins all the time. Loath as I am to admit it, I know exactly how you feel right now.”
“With the minor exception that I liked my dad and my brother?”
He sneers. “Yes, aside from that. A failure is a failure, and I’ve had my share of utterly dismal ones.” His hand goes to his forearm, where she knows there’s a long scar hidden by his sleeve. “I’m currently the second-oldest citizen of Providence, and I can tell you that age has very little to do with how often schemes fail. We can’t plan for everything.”
“Uncle Wade does.”
That pisses him off, even if it doesn’t show on his face. “Your godfather is a walking ludicrous impossibility, and he has a self-aware glass computer that calculates the probabilities of future events…but there is an enormous difference between probability and statistics, Julie. Just because the odds of something happening are slim, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. And conversely, just because the odds are good, that doesn’t mean it will happen. Besides which, knowing the odds in advance alters them, so just how much do you think that preposterous lump of light actually tells the Supreme Commander?”
“I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I’m being a total dumbass about this.”
“You are,” he agrees. “But your father and brother just died, and while I hate my father, I understand what it is to feel familial love, and I understand your sense of loss. So come here and give me a hug-and remember that if you ever mention it, I will probably eviscerate you.”
She gets up and goes to him, and throws her arms around his broad, strong shoulders. He smells like leather and sweat. He smells like her mother.
“We’re better than everyone else, Julie,” he murmurs, rubbing at the spot between her shoulder blades. “But we’re not perfect. Everybody fucks up sometime. Just shake it off and keep going. All right?”
She nods.
He lets her cling until she’s ready to let go, and she’s grateful for that.
Suddenly, she notices that it’s just the two of them. She frowns at the door. “Where’s Mr. B?” she asks.
“I told Lester to go get us some lunch,” Daken replies. “Because the hug that will never again be mentioned is the sort of thing about which he would tease me endlessly, and he, sad to say, does not recover quite so well from evisceration as you and I.”
.End.
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