VIKINGS !
by
Gail Gardner
Odin One-Eye drained the horn of mead, the strong brew soaking into his beard as it flowed down his gullet and front. He slammed the empty horn down on the rough wooden planks that were his feasting table.
"ÅÅrrrssee.! " He growled. "Ve'er a fine crew an' ve've had some fine adventures and good booty to show fer it." He waved expansively at the gilded loot that his men were pawing over. " Eh boys?"
"Arr...right" said Thor the Bear. He had his arm around a buxom Norse maiden and was torn between her bounteous bosom and the tankard of strong ale she was carrying. He opted for the ale and in true Viking manner guzzled it down. He didn't bother wiping off his mouth as his full beard, like Odin's, caught the excess.
"Lesh burn the village!" Arne the Berserk would have picked up a torch off the wall of the fetid hall, but he fell over the warthog. Too drunk to move, he lay on straw and let the animal grunt at the vermin that was crawling out of his matted hair. Arne had never used water, not even to drink. The villagers figured Arne was a Berserker more from the fleas and lice that infested him, not from any battle zeal.
Axel Six Finger was showing off his prowess with his throwing axe. He was considered a mere stripling among the rugged Norsemen, only topping six feet by a few inches and his beard, at best, was straggly. But, no one told that to his face. His aim and force with the axe, due to the extra digit on his right hand, was deadly. A large rat, squealed and died, cut neatly in half by Axel's axe. He picked up the weapon, examined the edge with calloused thumb, carefully licked off the blade, and hung it back on his belt.
A large black raven that had been sitting in the rafters fluttered down to perch on Odin One-Eye's shoulder.
"Graakk." The unusually large bird puffed up its feathers and eyed the company of roistering Norsemen balefully.
"The Gods have spoken..."Odin intoned. "It is time for us to embark on our most perilous venture. We sail to the end of the world..."
"Awww dragon crap..."Thor the Bear complained having just decided to have the Norse maiden instead of another flagon of ale.
Arne the Berserk sat up and grabbed up the warthog. "We get to burn and pillage?" he began to look enthusiastic, the red light of berserk beginning to shine in his eyes.
"No! Not yet! And remember pillage first THEN burn." Odin, Thor, and Axel shouted together. The raven added a stare out of its beady eyes.
The send off for the four men and the raven onto their longboat was tempered by the fact that the villagers were happy to see the last of the dangerous, ill-mannered, ale guzzling crew.
"You think they'll come back?" Eskil Homelight asked, as he tried to look solemn.
"They always do." An old crone of thirty intoned. "A curse on Odin One-Eye and his raven."
"Aw shut up Brunhilde, yer jest mad cus Thor took up with Stjerna."
"Well a curse on Thor Bear Butt, too." She snarled.
The villagers began to look at each other anxiously, curses were tricky things and quite likely to come true, especially if you cursed three times.
"Now, Hildy..." Eskil tried to placate the angry woman.
"And on the rest of his dragon shit crew and anyone else who crosses their paths." She crossed her arms over a still ample bosom and spat for emphasis on the ground. A roll of thunder answered the woman's dire words.
"Now you've done it..." Arvo held up two fingers in the age-old gesture of warding off evil, as did everyone else in the village. They began swaying back and forth and chanting verses to avoid the spell falling on themselves. "Hell no, we won't go." They wailed.
ÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖ
Once the longboat was out of sight of the village the Raven, Munin, spoke.
"Engage motor." The four men thankfully unshipped the oars and stretched their aching muscles as the silent impulser engine began to propel the boat at a quick clip through the North Seas. The waves began to whip higher as clouds began to cover the sky.
"Looks like a real bad storm comin'" The raven eyed the weather suspiciously. "You boys all right?"
Odin One-Eye was already bending over the rail throwing up half a haunch of roast boar, two parsnips, seven tankards of ale and a horn or two of mead.
"Not enough fightin'" Arne complained. "Can I fight the storm?"
"Not now Arne!" The group chorused except for Odin whose mouth was full.
Hugin, the warthog, squeaked anxiously.
"Thirty seconds until transfer. Now, gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining me on this Norse quest..." The raven began his spiel when a massive bolt of lightning struck the longboat. It was outlined in a nimbus of white light shot through with pulses of red and blue. The longboat and its occupants disappeared.
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
"Take her down!" Captain Lee Crane gave the quick order.
"Hatches secured. Dive. All dive." Executive Officer Chip Morton efficiently carried out the captain's orders. He ran a hand through his blond hair that was plastered to his scalp by the torrential rain that had caught them unawares.
A sudden sharp crash echoed through the hull. The Seaview, only inches from being totally submerged, was outlined in a nimbus of white light shot through with pulses of red and blue.
ÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖ
They were floating in an odd pink and blue mist. It was like being lost in a cloud of cotton candy or a Shirley Temple movie.
Thor the Bear stood up unsteadily on the deck of the longship. "Man what a hangover..." he muttered. He nudged Arne who was lying on his back. Hugin, the warthog, had a hoof on the man's chest and was snuffling in his ear.
"Kill..maim...destroy..." Arne smiled happily and hugged the unhappy pig to his chest.
The raven was fluttering around the deck checking on the other men and keeping an eye on the uncertain surroundings. "Looks like a temporal port overload..." It muttered and ducked below the deck.
The warthog suddenly scampered to the bow of the ship and began to squeal furiously. The great grey bulk of a submarine was coasting leisurely towards them. It came to rest gently next to the longboat. There was a pop, a fizz, and the two boats welded together like two soap bubbles joining.
ÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖ
"What the..." Captain Crane picked himself up off the deck. The rest of the crew seemed to all right. There were only a few scattered moans and muttered curses.
"We must of been hit by lightning..." Mr. Morton screwed a finger in his ear, hoping to relieve the ringing noise.
"Sir, we are dead in the water. Helm doesn't answer." Seaman Riley was trying to shift the submarine out of park and into first gear.
"Chip, take a look through the periscope, see if you can tell where we are." The Captain ordered.
"Huh?" The Exec looked at Crane confusedly.
"The periscope !"The Captain barked.
Morton removed the finger from his ear, "You don't have to yell..." he mumbled, "Just one little hit by lightning and he's Captain Qweeg..." He pulled down the periscope and started to pan around. "Uh oh," he said. "Umm I don't think we are in Kansas any more."
"What!" Crane barked again."Let me have a look."
"One little hit by lightning and he's Judy Garland..." Lee Crane muttered under his breath as he took his turn at the periscope "There's a Viking longboat right next to us...!".
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
"Look at THAT!" Axel cried out and pointed rather rudely with his extra finger to the big boat that dwarfed the long boat.
"Now, that's a lo-o-ong boat." Thor grinned. His companions groaned at the terrible pun.
"It's a sea monster! Fight with the sea monster!" Arne pulled out his broadsword and gave the side of the gray ship a ringing blow. The sword bounced back and hit him in the head, luckily his head was protected by his horned helmet, but he was still knocked off his feet and was dazed.
The warthog was running up and down the deck and grunting in distress.
"We better hide..." Odin said squinting at the strange vessel. "You know, just to make sure...in case of trouble..."
The three Vikings dragged the half-stunned berserker with them behind the flimsy protection of the sail.
"What's it doing?" Axel had his axe out and was looking for a target. The wart hog was grunting and pawing the deck. The Vikings, one by one, drew their swords. Arne's sword was at an odd angle and his eyes were unfocussed, but he began to get his second wind. "Fight?" He asked hopefully.
"No, not yet." His companions hissed.
The head of the monster opened up and to their horror strange people came out of it.
"It's wimmen!" Thor said. "No beards!"
"They'ze men." Odin hit Thor the Bear on the head with a none too gentle fist. "Even I ken tell with one eye. Youngens. We can take 'em easy. Steal their monster, ship, whatever."
About ten of the puny beardless men were on the deck of the gray ship.
"Hello, the longboat!" One of them called out.
"It's talkin' to the boat..." Axel whispered nervously. "Mebbe they'ze gods...mean gods."
"Gods ain't no good without beards, Gods bigger than you or me." Odin said authoritatively.
"We are unarmed..." One of them foolishly said.
The Vikings looked at each other and grinned. It wasn't a pretty picture. Broken blackened teeth with the remains of the last three or four years of eating hanging out of crevasses was an appalling sight.
"Now Arne." Odin gave the berserker a nudge.
"Huh?" Arne was staring at the deck.
"You can go berserk." Thor prompted him. "They said they are unarmed. We'll be right behind you."
"That's right, make the berserker do all the dirty work. I kill most of them, then you guys come in whoopin' and hollerin' about how many you killed."Arne pouted.
"But Arne, yer the berserker, ye like it..."
"Okay, okay, jest don' shove..." He took a deep breath. With a blood curdling yell he led the charge of the four Vikings and the warthog against their unsuspecting foe.
The next few minutes were a melee of Vikings, Seaview crew, and a warthog. In the thick of the fight, the raven fluttered up onto the deck.
"All fixed...by the Beard of Freja!" It squawked. There was a funny crackling noise and a definite loud pop.
Things changed.
The sky was now red and orange.
Captain Lee Crane had been grappling with a large one-eyed man, only his skills at unarmed combat had kept him from being spitted on a sword.
Seaman Riley had narrowly avoided being brained by an axe and was holding on for all his worth to keep the axe from his throat.
Mr. Morton was in the hands of a crazy man and was within inches of being dashed to the deck like so much dirty laundry.
Kowalski and two other crewmen had been trying to subdue the biggest man, only Kowalski had a grip on the man - the rest had been tossed aside like rag dolls.
The warthog had knocked about three people off their feet and was heading for another victim.
They all changed.
The boats were now far apart. Between them a vast sea of blue-black water.
Lee Crane sat up groggily.
"By the Gods..." He shook his head and then frowned. He felt...strange. His depth perception seemed all cockeyed.
"Oh man...oh dear..." Riley looked down at himself and saw - someone else. He waved his hand in front of his eyes. "I'm sick." He muttered, "I see six fingers."
"Wenches, wimmen, beer, oh my achin' head." Kowalski moaned his hand went to his head to touch a horned helmet.
"Fight! Kill! Uh maim...destroy...uh oh something has happened." Morton twitched involuntarily and started scratching his ribs.
"Hold it you bozos!" Chief Sharkey, who had the presence of mind to arm himself with a rather large hand gun, pointed it at the four strange men. "Who are you and what have you done with the Skipper?" He looked around bewilderedly and raised the gun more menacingly. "And the Exec, Ski and Riley."
"Put that thing down, Chief." Odin One-Eye/Lee Crane said testily.
"Sir? Issat you. Boy, you sure have, uh changed. You and the others, you have become Vikings!" He reluctantly lowered the weapon.
"Smart, real smart. What are you doing here? Don't you know better than to cross directly into a tesseract flow? What kind of idiots are you?" A voice said crossly.
"Who said that?" Crane/Odin said sharply. He felt a sudden urge to grab someone or something and strangle it. The other Viking clones sensed his turmoil and shifted weapons defensively.
The raven fluttered off the conning tower where it had beaten a strategic retreat during the melee. "Me, of course." It eyed the submarine and the rest of the normal crew who were trying not to stare too much at the transformed crew members. "Hmmm. Primitives, potentially dangerous, but...eeeeggg." Its last words dwindled into a hopeless squawk as Admiral Nelson grabbed it by the legs and held it upside down.
"Primitive possibly, but not without our own ways and means. Now, before I ask Cookie to make me a raven pie how about getting my men back to normal?"
"No speakee English..." The raven tried to struggle out of the tight grip on its legs.
"Oh I think you do, and not too badly either." Nelson gave the bird a little shake just to let the bird know who had the upper hand - literally.
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
The crew and its changeling members were all trying to act as normal as possible. Captain Crane who had the most experience with unwanted body swapping was more at ease than the others. He had neatly caught up the dangling beard into a neat bundle with a rubber band so it wouldn't hinder his work.
Riley was enjoying the use of six fingers on his hands. "Man I bet I can cut a great riff on the guitar with these babies." Visions of being the king of the next beach party were cut short by a sobering glimpse of his straggly bearded face reflected in the inky darkness of the bow windows.
Kowalski experimentally flexed bulging biceps. He'd always been in good shape, but this new body would put a body builder to shame. Too bad about the smell...
Chip Morton wasn't at all pleased with the situation. He prided himself on self-control and now he found himself twitching, itching, and his skin seemed to ripple of its own volition, like a horse shrugging off flies.
Nelson and the over large raven had come to the conclusion that civilized conversation was possible as long as one party wasn't held upside down by the legs and the other kept snotty remarks to themselves.
"So your technology must be far superior to ours." Nelson prodded gently.
"Oh yes, of course. Naturally. Seems pretty obvious, don't you think?" The raven was laying it on rather thick.
"So, your people are explorers, scientists learning about our ancient cultures." Nelson leaned forward eagerly. He loved shop talk.
"Well..."The raven looked around modestly. "I towt I saw a puddy tat..." It suddenly said looking around.
"Time travellers, no discovery or experience too dangerous..." The Admiral began to look enthusiastic.
"I'll have the office send you a brochure..." The bird swivelled around quickly. "Nevermore!"
"Office of Antiquities?" Nelson prompted helpfully.
"Hmmm. A bird in the hand is worth two in the shrub." It hopped around the table and began to look distracted. The warthog gave a large snort.
"Oh yes, well actually a bureau...trvl bro..." The bird muttered into its feathers.
"What did you say?" Nelson began to grow impatient.
"I am an agent." The bird spoke clearly this time. The warthog gave a fruity wet snort that sounded remarkably like a raspberry.
"Well, after my period of apprenticeship I will be a full-fledged travel agent." The raven managed its own version of a raspberry back at the warthog. It was a pathetic 'thwit'.
"You mean you are a travel agent and the people you brought with you are ...are tourists?"Admiral Nelson said incredulously.
"We prefer to refer to them as 'Wayfarers through the tides of time'. Catchy, huh?"
"Then you have no idea about what happened or how we are going to correct it..." Nelson said chillingly. The tone of voice finally sunk in to the cocky raven.
"I'm a tour guide, not a quantum mechanic or a tesseract flow merchant. But all I need to do is get back on board the long boat and push the reset button. That always does the trick. That and a good whap on the console." The raven chortled at its own joke.
"Lee set a course towards the longboat."
"Ar...aye sir. Git yer mangy ass...! Er set a course . All ahead full." Crane hastily corrected his speech patterns.
"Fight! Let's get that longboat. Destroy the...uh...hmmm...ah...you heard the Captain men." Morton began to vigorously scratch his head. Some things began to hit the deck with a little patter and scurry off to find other accommodations. The part of the man that was the Exec swallowed hard. The part that was Viking shuddered in sympathy for his former companions. Who would keep them warm in this cold metal environment?
"Captain...permission to go take a shower." The words had barely left his lips when his own fist slammed into his face splitting his lip. He rejoiced at the sight of blood, even if it was his own. No, he didn't!
Hugin the hog snorted at his knee, concern in his little red piggy eyes.
Munin sighed. "Are you deranged? You shouldn't even mention the word water around your body."
"What do you mean, I can't have a shower?" Morton's steady voice rose steadily to a high pitch. "There are things on me!"
"You are not allowed to bend, fold, spindle, or mutilate the guest body. Arne the Berserk has never bathed..." The raven, Munin, tried to soothe the agitated man.
"We noticed!" The rest of the crew chorused.
"And it is against his character to do so. If you try to go against that character, I am afraid the results would be catastrophic." Munin ruffled up its feathers in a raven version of a shudder. "If you go against the nature of your host, it would destroy your mind. Not a pretty picture."
"In a few hours that will be a real option." Morton groaned.
"Come now . You can put up with a little discomfort." Admiral Nelson chided the distraught officer. He went to put a comforting hand on the man's shoulder but seeing what was crawling around there decided not to.
"Admirraaal Nelson" Crane began in a guttural German accent and then laughed "Gotcha heh heh. We cannot seem to get close to the longboat. The distance is alway the same." He instinctively laid a hand on the hilt of his sword.
"But I have to get back to push the reset button..." The raven whined.
"Can't you fly?" Nelson raised an eyebrow at the bird. Just because he was a genius didn't mean he didn't have any common sense.
"Ah, well you see the bird get up is just a camouflage. Can't fly. Not one of these. Can't swim either. Don't really think it would be wise." The raven cocked a head towards the stygian black waters that could be seen through the bow. "Don't look too healthy."
"Hmmmm." Nelson nodded. "So, every time we try to get closer to the longboat it moves away. Could it be that our two vessels are like the opposite poles of a magnet?"
The warthog snorted and pawed twice at the floor.
"What is it Lassie? Timmy's in the well again?" The raven asked. The warthog pawed the floor again. "Oh, you mean he could be right..."
"What does the pig know?" Nelson asked.
"Heck, he's interstellar pilot, they know a lot of stuff. Where to pick up chicks in port. How to get those neat little bottles of booze the spacecraft give only to first class passengers. Astrogation, abrogation, aspiration and barroom brawling. Academy grad aren't you Hugin? Or was it a correspondence course? No matter, Hugin seems to think you are on the right track."
Admiral Nelson then very quickly with the help of the digitally adept six-fingered Riley adjusted a torpedo with a magnetic de-gausser. The only thing he had to do is keep Riley from using his axe as an all-purpose tool.
They were ready now to fire the specially rigged torpedo. The four Vikings were behaving more like the crewman that they all knew rather than barbarians. The raven fussed and strutted along the deck. It rather embarrassedly left a pile of bird poo on the chart table. Then disaster struck.
The Ship's Cat had been only biding her time. The raven was a formidable foe, easily twice her size and with a long sharp beak that could easily kill the cat. But this was her territory, no back talking avian was going to get away with anything on her ship and with her men. She slid unnoticed to within two feet of the unsuspecting victim and then with one great pounce came down hard on the bird's back. The cat had the neck of the raven firmly clenched in her jaws.
"Guuurkkk" The raven fluttered in distress dragging the cat with it. The cat dug razor sharp claws into the birds body and hung on tenaciously. "Ger off ye filty..." The raven's voice dwindled as the cat closed its jaws tighter.
Hugin, the warthog, snorted. His little beady eyes glowed red with inner fire. He snorted again, pawed the deck, and rushed at the struggling pair. Twenty-five kilos of enraged porker was enough to scare the wits out of the cat. She let go of the bird and leaped up in the air, only to come down feet first on the back of the warthog. She dug in her claws and hung on for dear life, every hair on her body standing straight up. The cat and the warthog did three full circuits of the control room before the cat bailed out. She skittered down the corridor to the galley to find shelter under the stove.
"Bad omen, bad omen..." Captain Crane blurted out and made some rather rude and ineffective gestures with his fingers. "I mean, someone grab that pig and tie him up."
Hugin was disgusted to being summarily tied up and grunted and squealed in the equivalent of pig latin or pig cursing.
"Torpedo ready to fire." Morton relayed the message trying not to scratch.
"Fire one!" Crane gave the order.
"Aye sir, firing one." Riley utilized his extra finger gleefully.
The torpedo sped with determination through the black blue waters kicking up a white froth. It was dead on for the longboat. When it hit, a shocking nimbus of green 's fire shot in a wild arc through the sky connecting the two boats. Everyone's hair stood on end, instruments went wild, and all the cutlery in the galley slammed into the iron stove dislodging the cat from her temporary protection. The two boats slid together and with a sound almost like a burp and sigh nestled next to each other.
"I got it, IgotitIgotit..." The raven fluttered from the conning tower down to the long boat. The Vikings gathered on the deck with the pig who could not be left below.
"Now what..." Nelson began when a bolt of lightning lit up both ships and sprayed pink and blue fireworks everywhere blinding them.
OÄOÄOÄOÄ
Admiral Nelson blinked and rubbed the funny lights from his eyes. Of course it was three a.m. and he didn't particularly like being woken up even for the mess in the Sickbay.
"This is a catastrophe..." He said viewing the groaning patients.
Doctor Jamieson rubbed the back of his neck tiredly. "I haven't seen it so bad since we hit that iceberg two years ago."
Nelson shook his head. "And all this from a 24-hour leave in Stockholm." He turned to his captain who was having a nasty cut over his eye stitched. The eye itself was bruised and swollen shut.
"So Captain, what happened to you?"
"Ah...it was an accident...Chip. He didn't mean it. Oww!" He winced as the corpsman placed a neat patch over his eye.
Nelson looked over to the Executive Officer who was lying on a bed moaning softly. His body was covered in red spots. His hands were tied to the side of the bed.
"What happened to him?"
"Smorgasbord." The Captain said sadly, "Ten different kinds of herring, herring in sour cream, pickled herring, herrings and whitefish, herring with dill, herring with...well Doc isn't sure which one caused the allergic reaction, but when the rash broke out, well he sort of went berserk and my eye collided with his elbow. He's sedated now, but the itching must be driving him crazy."
Nelson rolled his eyes half in sympathy, half in exasperation. "So what happened to Riley and Kowalski?" Seaman Riley had his fingers bandaged and splinted and Kowalski was nursing bruised knuckles and what appeared to be a broken nose. "A bar fight?"
Both men looked a bit sheepish. "Umm we met a couple of ladies." Ski began and then stopped. "Uh only they turned out that they weren't real ladies." Both men turned bright red.
"Ah not ladies, but women of low repute..." Nelson began. Captain Crane tapped his arm and hissed "Stockholm, sir. Remember."
"Oh, yes!" The corner of Nelson's mouth twitched. "Stockholm. Interesting people the Swedes."
OHOOHOOHO!
"Had a little trouble, Munin?" The Superior asked, the tone rather acid for his kind of species.
"Well, a bit...uh...but I put most of it back together. I think..." Munin kept one naturally beady eye on his boss and the other two on his tour group who were exchanging happy memories of their trip. Hugin and his brood of offspring had a rewarding vacation.
"The parent being was satisfied and of course the kids had fun." Munin said brightly.
"You followed standard mop-up procedures, I presume. The bad dream..."
"Well..." Munin paused and coughed nervously. "I didn't really, sir I am sorry to say that I happened to offend a higher intelligence. It was quite upset and insisted on doing the repairs for itself."
"A higher intelligence? On that world? In that time period? What...oh my..."The Superior swallowed its face, a sure sign of distress. When it re-emerged the color was disgustingly gray. "Not one of them."
Munin nodded sadly. "They have Kurrrnau."
MMMMMYES...
The strands of time and space were finally knit back together into their usual bright pattern of controlled chaos. The Kurrrnau finally relaxed. The vessel, the men, their spirits and minds, the great ocean, and the stars all seemed to pull and tug naturally at the ribbons of reality. The entity known as the Kurrrnau was constantly balancing the whole lot. It was a tough job, but very rewarding. She purred in bliss as the man whose lap she sat in scratched her behind the ears, a most pleasing spot.
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