Eleventh Installment: An Unexpected Development

A loud claxon sound in four short pings, almost startling Loki. Mae shifted the partition aside enough he could see the bases from which the crystals grew shifting. Two of them, glowing bright blue, moved closer together. The base apparatuses had some protruding parts which linked together with a soft snick. Panels in the floors opened and another crystal came up. This one was perfectly clear.

Drained of its energy, Loki decided. Probably kept for storage just like this. The base apparatus of the clear crystal hooked up to the ones of the blue and glowing crystals. As he watched, the clear crystal took a faint blue glow and the other two dimmed a bit. It went on until the three crystals now had approximately the same glow.

"Well, how about that," Stark said. "The bases are live transfer stations."

"It's incredible how people learn to function without magic," Loki murmured. "The Ljósálfar performed a feat similar to that without the technology all the time."

The Director watched him closely during this exchange, and at those words she stirred. "You know the origin of these crystals," she said.

Not a question. Loki smiled, still looking at the crystals. "I do." The smile faded as he looked up at her. "But please ask for no more information than that. The are from a place unreachable."

The Director studied his face, eyes narrowed as if deep in thought. "Would you be willing to transfer some of your internal energy into one of these crystals?"

The smile returned, a little rueful. "Would that I could, but unfortunately, these crystals will not hold it."

Another short pause. "What if we had a storage device other than these crystals?" she asked.

Loki raised an eyebrow. "Do you have another one?"

"No," she said, "but perhaps we could make one. Have you any knowledge of engineering?"

"No," Loki said, and this time his smile was gentler, "but my companion does."

Mae flicked Stark an appraising glance. "He knows nothing of our technology."

"I think you'll find he's a quicker study than most," Loki said, actually not able to help giving his companion a soft smile. He rose from the chair. "Is there a place in the city we can stay? It will make this all much easier."

"Yes," she said, looking across the room and snapping her fingers, then making a beckoning gesture. "But before we do that, there's something I'd like to show you."

One of the two women who'd escorted Loki stopped in front of Mae. "Yes, Director?"

"Arrange a place to stay for Loki and his companions," she said, voice clipped, "preferably close to the Compound. And make sure someone sees to the strange readings we encountered last night in Sector 3. I'll be heading down to the crash site."

An odd thrill ran through Loki at those words. Crash site?

"Now then," Mae said, "please follow me."

o0o

It was officially on Tony's list of his five least favorite things, not being able to speak a language. Jarvis was programmed to translate all languages on Earth, and he wished he could ask this woman if she knew any programmers who could help with that here, so far from Earth.

Watching the whole interaction between his lover and this woman would be a lot less . . . one-sided. He took all his cues from Loki's body language, and so far his love seemed perfectly at ease. He didn't fail to notice the strange expression that passed over his face when the woman made her last comment. When she started heading off and Loki followed, he grabbed his lover's wrist.

"Where are we going?" he demanded in a low voice.

Loki looked up at him, and was that excitement in his verdant eyes? "She wants to show me a crash site. I don't know what crashed there, but I wonder . . ."

"Yes?" Tony prompted when he didn't go on.

Loki shook his head. "I don't know." He started walking again. "I won't know until I see it."

Skaði skipped along at Tony's side. "Does it have to do with the Ljósálfar, Loki?"

Glancing down at her, Loki just smiled and didn't answer.

The woman (Director Mae Agre, Loki finally told him when he asked) took them back down the elevator to the first floor. Then she led them through a series of doors and corridors to another elevator. This one, it turned out, only went down. She used a key card and code to enter it, gesturing Loki through first. Tony followed and planted himself between her and Loki.

"So, you trusting all this?" Tony asked his lover.

Who didn't look up at him. "To some extent," he replied silently. "She clearly wants something from me, but I suspect I know what. And I'm of a mind to give it. There's no telling what benefits we might reap if we encourage a little good will with these people."

Aloud, all he said was, "We'll see."

This elevator wasn't clear like the other one, and Skaði watched her reflection in the silvery doors. "I love this dress. It looks cute on me. And I love how you fixed my hair, Loki!"

This time, Loki smiled. "It looks perfect, dearest. You look perfect."

She beamed up at him, for all the world looking like a little girl basking in her mother's praise. Tony couldn't help a soft snort at how innocent her actions made her appear. That is, until one looked at her eyes. Then the illusion was ruined. Tony put a hand on top of her head, careful not to muss her pigtails.

"You look cute, princess."

Now she beamed at him.

The elevator went down for a way longer before finally stopping. The doors opened, and Tony was momentarily too startled to move. He'd been expecting some sort of bunker, maybe with concrete walls and floors and harsh lights. Instead, the elevator gave way to a relatively small platform of raw earth. And the cavern into which the platform plunged was a great, hollowed-out room deep underground.

Wood and metal scaffoldings stood everywhere, most of them leading to open crystal veins. Mining and monitoring equipment was everywhere, and probably thirty men and women worked within. But the thing that immediately grabbed Tony's attention and held it was the ship.

It wasn't enormous, but it was pretty big. Tony had no idea what metal formed the outer hull, and it had a sleek design rather pleasing to the eye. The metal itself was a dark brownish color, nearly the color of dried blood. It had a dull shine to it. The nose of the ship came to a rounded point, and it widened in a cone-like fashion down the body. The rear end opened into five extensions curved toward each other almost like claws.

Tony couldn't see any landing gear, which made the ship look rather like a toy.

Loki's eyes located it instantly, and he followed Mae without taking his eyes off it. Tony quickly followed, and Loki didn't stop until he'd reached the ship. When he was close enough to touch, he tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

"It is as I suspected," he murmured. His eyes opened and flashed to Tony's face. Yes, that was excitement in them. Muted, but present. "This ship is very, very old. They don't make them like this anymore. It was built in Alfheim. By the Ljósálfar."

Tony stared at it in open wonder. "But how did it get here?"

Loki lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "I couldn't say, but I would recognize it anywhere. The Ljósálfar built them during the very first war between Asgard and the Dark Elves. This would have been long before Odin was even born." Finally he reached out, running his hand down the side. "It has held up remarkably well."

The Director stirred and faced Loki. She said something in that unfriendly voice of hers, something which drew Loki's attention and turned his countenance pensive.

"What?" Tony demanded when she stopped talking. "What'd she say?"

Loki didn't answer right away, not taking his eyes off the woman. Then he nodded slowly. "I will agree to that, as long as your engineers and my companion can build a storage container capable of storing it."

"What?" Tony said again.

"She will give us this ship," Loki said, gesturing, "if I will allow her to extract . . ." He held up his arm, pushing the sleeve up. Then he looked at the woman. "But the containing device cannot have any crystal components." He pointed to the blue crystals. "They will not work."

The woman said something else, and Loki shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. Then he waved a hand toward the ship. "But I would be happy to give you this ship's history. And perhaps shed a little light on your own."

The woman nodded at once, saying something else. Loki smiled again.

"Thank you. Would you mind if I stayed down here and examined it a little more closely?"

Now the woman shook her head, saying something else. She gave Loki a key card and turned to go.

"Well?" Tony said when she'd gone.

Loki handed him the key card and walked to the open entry ramp of the ship. "I confess I've never actually seen one of these outside of books," he said, ducking inside, "but I'm confident I will learn its functions quickly. These ships were designed to transport ground forces quickly, long before the construction of the Bifrost when there was need to travel between the Realms. As such, it will safely travel through space. And quickly, too."

Feeling suddenly giddy, Tony followed him. "So this means I won't have to build one."

"No . . ." Loki said absently, "but you will likely have to build a new power source for it. They would have used those crystals."

Tony frowned, trying to look everywhere at once as they entered the cockpit. "Why won't the crystals work?"

Loki went right to the control console. "Because I would like to use the energy inside me as the power source, and I can't do that if the container are the crystals from Alfheim."

Blinking in surprise, Tony went to Loki and wrapped his arms around his waist. "Why?"

"The more of it I purge," Loki replied, "the closer I will come to restoring my own seiðr. The more of my own I can restore, the closer I will come to being able to heal myself."

Tony frowned. "In what way?"

Loki pushed his sleeve up and indicated the golden lines etched into his skin. "These are . . . well, I don't know quite how to explain it. Most simply, they're my seiðr channels. They were torn open by Thanos, which is why they're visible. It's also why using magic is so painful for me right now. Because it's foreign energy in my body, they haven't closed and healed. It won't be an easy process, healing the damage he did."

He sounded more angry than hurt or scared, and Tony found himself grateful. And he really, really wished he knew how to find Thanos so he could kill the bastard over and over and over. Hurt and kill him until his desperate need to ruin that asshole had at last been assuaged.

"But you'll be able to, right?" he asked, burying his nose in Loki's ebony hair and glad the Aesir hadn't tried to pull away.

A soft snort. "Yes, Anthony. Of course I will. Now stop clinging and answer a few questions."

Curious, Tony backed up and plunked down in the pilot's chair. "Questions for me?"

"Yes. Your computer AI. Jarvis. If I provide a translation key, will it be able to write a program to translate the language of the Ljósálfar?"

For several seconds, Tony was too startled to reply. Then he couldn't help chuckling. "You sure are quick on the uptake. I don't even know how many times I had to explain computers and programming to the Cap' and Thor, and neither of them got it. I never once explained it to you, and somehow you have an advanced understanding. How exactly did that happen, hm?"

The corner of Loki's mouth curved up in a slight smile. "I asked Miss Romanova to give me a brief explanation of Internet search engines. I will admit, humanity was clever in inventing a virtual database for all the knowledge they have accrued over their lives. It made learning about twenty-first century technology very, very easy."

Tony shook his head. "You'll probably never cease to amaze me, babe. And yes, Jarvis can do that. Why?"

"Because you will pilot this ship when we leave," Loki said. "I have no desire to do that. And something tells me you'll enjoy playing the captain. Am I right?" He reached up and stroked a finger across Tony's lips as he stepped past him.

Tony could practically feel his pupils dilate in arousal as he grinned. "Hell yes. Especially if I get to order your sweet ass around."

Loki said nothing to that, but Tony saw him smile.

As they walked toward the other end of the ship, Tony jumped when Skaði slid her hand into his. He looked down to find her smiling up at him, her eyes a mellow charcoal gray.

"I'm so glad you're here, Tony," she said. "I never once made him smile like that. You won't leave him, will you?"

Tony winked. "Nothing in the multiverse could drag me away, princess. He's stuck with me." He touched her nose. "And so are you."

She giggled into his mind.

Loki found the engine room, and Tony let go of Skaði's hand to examine it. This was his area of expertise, after all. He pointed out a few conductors that looked like they'd been designed for something very specific. He touched the empty housing units.

"For the crystals," he said aloud, looking around. "Yanno, I'm gonna have to do more than build an alternate power source. I'm going to have to build a whole new interfacing device."

For several moments, Loki said nothing as he stared blankly across the room. Then he stirred. "Those ear comm buds of yours. Can they be modified with a translation program? I'm fairly certain I could provide a translation key for the language these people speak. Then you could at least know what they're saying."

Tony looked at him for a few seconds before striding over to him and planting a wet kiss on his lips. Loki grunted, but before he could protest Tony pulled back to grin at him.

"Shit, I love you babe."

Loki smirked and turned away from him. "So you've said. Sentimental fool."

There was absolutely no mistaking the tenderness in his voice. Tony's grin stayed fixed to his face. Yep. He loves me, too.