Thor Meets Captain America
by David Brin
1
Loki’s dwarf rolled its eyes and moaned pitifully as the sub levelled off at periscope depth. With stubby fingers the gnarled, neckless creature pulled at its yellow-stained beard and stared up at the creaking pipes.
A thing of dark forest depths and hidden caves, Chris Turing thought as he watched the dwarf. It wasn’t meant for this place.
Only men would choose such a way to die, in a leaking steel coffin, on a hopeless attempt to blow up Valhalla.
But then, it wasn’t like Loki’s dwarf had been given any choice in being here.
Why, Chris wondered suddenly—not for the first time. Why do such creatures exist? Wasn’t evil doing well enough in the world before they came to help it along?
The submarine’s engines rumbled and Chris shrugged aside the thought. Even imagining a world without Aesir and their servants in it was by now as hard as remembering a time without war.
Chris sat strapped in his crash seat—he could hear the swishing of icy Baltic water just behind the tissue-thin bulkhead—and watched the gnome huddle atop a crate of hydrogen bomb parts. It drew its clublike feet up away from the sloshing brine on the deck, scrunching higher on the black box. Another moan escaped the dwarf as the Razorfin’s periscope went up, and more water gurgled in through the pressure relief lines.
Major Marlowe looked up from the assault rifle he was reassembling for the thirtieth time. “What’s eating the damn dwarf now?” the marine officer asked.
Chris shook his head. “Search me. The fact that he’s out of his element, maybe? After all, the ancient Norse thought of the deep as a place for sunken boats and fishes.”
“I thought you were some sort of expert on the Aesir. And you aren’t even sure why the thing is foaming at the mouth like that?”
Chris could only shrug and repeat himself. “I said I don’t know. Why don’t you go over and ask him yourself?”
Marlowe gave Chris a sour glance, as if to say that he didn’t much care for the joke. “Sidle up to that stench and ask Loki’s damn dwarf to explain its feelings? Hmmph. I’d rather spit in an Aesir’s eye.”
From his left, Chris’s assistant, Zap O’Leary leaned out and grinned at Marlowe. “Dig it, dad-dyo,” O’Leary said to the marine. “There’s an Aes over by the scope, dope. Be my guest. Write him runes in his spitoon.” The eccentric technician gestured over toward the navy men, clustered around the sub’s periscope. Next to the Skipper stood a hulking figure clad in furs and leather, towering over the submariners.
Marlowe blinked back at O’Leary in bewilderment. The marine did not seem offended as much as confused. “What did he say?” he asked Chris.
Chris wished he weren’t seated between the two. “Zap suggests that you test it by spitting in Loki’s eye.”
Marlowe grimaced. O’Leary might as well have suggested he stick his hand into a scram-jet engine. At that moment one of the marines crammed into the passageway behind them made the mistake of dropping a cartridge into the foul leak-water underfoot. Marlowe vented his frustration on the poor grunt in richly inventive profanity.
The dwarf moaned again, hugging his knees against the straps holding him onto the hermetically sealed crate.
Wherever they’re from, they aren’t used to submarines, Chris thought. And these so-called dwarves sure don’t like water.
Chris wondered how Loki had managed to persuade this one to come along on this suicide mission.
Probably threatened to turn him into a toad, he speculated. I wouldn’t put it past Loki.
It was a desperate venture they were engaged in. In late 1962 there was very little time left for what remained of the Alliance against Nazism. If anything at all could be done this autumn, to stave off the inevitable, it would be worth the gamble.
Even Loki—bearlike, nearly invulnerable, and always booming forth laughter that sent chills down human spines—had betrayed nerves earlier, as the Razorfin dropped from the belly of a screaming bomber, sending their stomachs whirling as the arrow-sub plummeted like a great stone into Neptune’s icy embrace.
Chris had to admit that he would have been sick, had that brief, seemingly endless fall lasted any longer. The crash and shriek of tortured metal when they hit was almost a relief, after that.
And anything seemed an improvement over the long, screeching trip over the pole, skirting Nazi missiles, skimming mountains and gray waters in lurching zigs and zags, helplessly listening, strapped into place, as the airmen swooped their flying coffins hither and yon… praying that the enemy’s Aesir masters weren’t patrolling that section of the north that night…
Of twenty sub carriers sent out together from Baffin Island, only six had made it all the way to the waters between Sweden and Finland. And both Cetus and Tigerfish had broken up on impact with the water, tearing like ripped sardine cans and spilling their hapless crews into freezing death.
Only four subs left, Chris thought.
Still, he reminded himself. Our chances may be slim, but those poor pilots are the real heroes. He doubted even one of the crews would make it across dark, deadly Europe to Tehran and safety.
“Captain Turing!”
Chris looked up as the Skipper called his name. Commander Lewis had lowered the periscope and moved over to the chart table.
“Be right with you, Commander.” Chris unstrapped and stepped down into the brine.
“Tell ’em we’re savin’ our own hooch for ourselves,” O’Leary advised him, sotto voice. “Good pot is to rare to share.”
“Shut up, fool.” Marlowe growled. Chris ignored both of them as he sloshed forward. The Skipper awaited him, standing beside their “friendly advisor,” the alien creature calling himself Loki.
I’ve known Loki for years, Chris thought. I’ve fought alongside him against his Aesir brothers… and still he scares the living hell out of me every time I look at him.
Towering over everyone else, Loki regarded Chris enigmatically with fierce black eyes. The “god of tricks” looked very much like a man, albeit an unnaturally large and powerful one. But those eyes belied the impression of humanity. Chris had spent enough time with Loki, since the renegade Aesir defected to the allied side, to have learned to avoid looking into them whenever possible.
“Sir,” he said, nodding to Commander Lewis and the bearded Aesir. “I take it we’re approaching point Y?”
“That’s correct,” the Skipper said. “We’ll be there in about twenty minutes, barring anything unforeseen.”
Lewis seemed to have aged over the last twenty hours. The young sub commander knew that his squadron wasn’t the only thing considered expendable in this operation. Several thousand miles to the west, the better part of what remained of the United States Surface Navy was engaged hopelessly for one reason only—to distract the Kriegsmarine and the SS and especially a certain “god of the sea” away from the Baltic and Operation Ragnarok. Loki’s cousin Tyr wasn’t very potent against submarines, but unless his attention was drawn elsewhere, he could make life hell for them when their tiny force tried to land.
So tonight, instead, he would be making hell for American and Canadian and Mexican sailors, far away.
Chris shied away from thinking about it. Too many boys were going to their deaths off Labrador, just to keep one alien creature occupied while four subs tried to sneak in through the back door.