The first plan that occurred to Steve was the self-sacrificing wanker one – he could crash the Leviathan. That would kill all of them, but it would take the queen, too…
That wasn't what they were trying to accomplish, though. Their whole purpose was to get back home alive so they could deal with this using their normal powers and resources. There was self-sacrificing, and then there was self-defeating.
Suddenly, something moved on the console. The screen with the forward view shrank into a corner, and another popped up to take its place. This was the point of view of one of the remaining Chi'Tauri soldiers, and it was looking at a tablet, being held up by a terrified but defiant NASA employee.
The image was of Ochoa, standing in front of one of the metal shutters in the Houston underground tunnels. She was still filthy and sweaty, but she had washed her face and was standing up tall, with Colleen and Kevin on either side of her.
"This is Ellen Ochoa, director of the Johnson Space Centre," she announced, "and I have a message for you, visitors from space! You said we have no heroes, but you made two big mistakes. The first was assuming we can't make our own interdimensional wormholes. It just so happens that Dr. Kevin Farinas here is one of the world's experts." Next to her, Kevin held up a page covered with drawings and equations. Steve had no idea what any of it meant, or indeed whether it meant anything at all, but it looked very technical and impressive. "You may have some of the Avengers," Ochoa went on, "but we have the rest!"
The metal door behind her rolled up. Fog rolled out from underneath it, probably from one of the liquid nitrogen fire extinguishers, and a group of figures stepped out. They were brilliantly backlit, and at first it wasn't possible to see anything but their silhouettes, but those were, themselves, familiar. The stuntmen representing Steve, Thor, and Natasha were not there, but Elizabeth Olsen was, and Jeremy Renner, and the man who played Colonel Rhodes – Steve had never caught his name. It had to be Donny in the Spiderman costume, and there was Sebastian Stan, dressed as Bucky and complete with a special sleeve to represent his mechanical arm… and Pietro, who must have arrived late but there he was, alive and whole and sipping a frappuccino.
In the middle of them all was Bob Downey, dressed in a tailored suit and red sunglasses that were perfectly Tony Stark. He stepped up beside Ochoa and pulled the glasses off with one swift, dramatic motion.
"That second mistake she mentioned?" he said. "That was assuming we wouldn't come for our team-mates. Avengers?" He glanced over his shoulder, and the others tensed. Bob pumped his fist in the air. "Assemble!"
With that, the video was over.
It would never work, Steve thought. Even with the scenario re-written, the Chi'Tauri would know now that it was a bluff, a distraction. Just for a split second, however, the Queen paused, cocking her head at the screen and trying to figure out what she'd just seen.
A split second was all Natasha needed. She kicked out and hit the gem on the Queen's belt, and the force field flickered and died. Loki grabbed the end of the plasma rifle the Queen had taken from him, its barrel still in her hand, and pulled the trigger. The bolt went right through her arm, severing it at the shoulder. The bolt went right through her arm, severing it at the shoulder. She shrieked and dropped Thor and Natasha, and Loki jammed the muzzle end of the weapon into the bloody stump and fired again, directly into the exposed flesh.
This shot went right through her and out the other side, spattering Thor with blue-black gore, and the Queen collapsed. Steve had to roll out of the way to avoid her massive body coming down on top of him. Natasha scrambled under the console and curled up, preparing to be crushed.
The giant corpse hit the console, slid a bit, and pushed against the control column. The Leviathan rolled over and went into a dive.
Steve dragged himself upright again and tried to push her off. Thor, on the other side of the body, attempted to pull. Natasha, trapped under the edge of the console, joined Steve in pushing, and Loki dropped the plasma rifle and did the same.
"You cannot blame me for breaking this!" Thor said.
"Don't you two dare start!" Natasha ordered.
Warnings blared all around them as they dropped, but the Queen's body was literally dead weight, and it refused to move. Steve could barely believe this was happening. He felt as if he were outside himself, watching this all go on in slow motion from a million miles away. They couldn't have survived everything so far, from the movie set to escaping the police to fighting the Chi'Tauri, only to die in a stupid, stupid accident only moments after they'd won.
Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw the screen with the starfield on it. There was an icon in the corner like a pulsating circle, stretching and relaxing as it spun end over end. They had nothing to lose now, so there was no harm in experimenting. He reached up and touched the icon.
It shrank to a point and then vanished. There was a sound that rose quickly in pitch until it was no longer audible, followed by a flash of light. A blue sizzle passed through the cockpit of the Leviathan, bringing with it a prickling sensation and a metallic taste in the mouth, and then suddenly they were weightless.
Steve had never been in zero gravity before, and it was a deeply disorienting sensation. His gut told him he was falling, but the air around him was perfectly still. Loki, who'd still been pushing on the queen, was thrust backwards by his own efforts and set spinning in the air. Thor, pulling from the other side, could no longer keep his feet on the ground and had to grab the Queen's arm to keep from floating away. Natasha squirmed out from under the console and hung in midair, waving away gobs of blue-black blood that were now floating freely.
"I think I just activated the wormhole," Steve told her.
"Oh, really?" she asked, her face perfectly, sarcastically neutral.
"Yes," Steve replied, "as a matter of fact."
The star map screen had now grown larger, to take the place of the front view. Steve couldn't identify any of the stars they were seeing, but he wondered…
"Do you think we're back in our own universe?" he asked.
"We're certainly not back in our own bodies," Loki observed.
Like the rest of them, the body of the Queen was now floating gently, leaving the controls once again accessible. Steve squirmed in between corpse and console to take the steering column, and flew the Leviathan in a wide arc, hoping for a look at what was all around him. He was out of the habit of formal prayer, but in the back of his head Steve was murmuring please, God, please… please let him find himself looking down at Earth. His own Earth, where he was, or had once been, Captain America.
Stars rolled by. Thousands and thousands of them, cleft by the soft glow of the Milky Way.
Steve's hopes sank slowly. It looked like there was nothing out here, just empty space in all directions. Then something caught his eye. For a moment he thought he'd seen a star move… then he realized it had winked out. A few seconds later, it reappeared. There was an object there.
Now that he was paying attention, he saw more of them. There was something out there. Multiple big, dark, symmetrical things, floating silent and almost invisible in space – and the Leviathan's computer recognized them. Lines appeared on the viewscreen, filling in the details of giant ships with smaller companions, and cold terror washed over Steve as he realized they were approaching an armada. There were at least six of the big vessels and too many of the small ones to properly count, and one that was absolutely huge, hanging over all the others like a volcanic cloud.
And here were Steve and the others with their one relatively tiny ship, in bodies that had barely survived four Chi'Tauri. Who knew how many millions more were waiting for them out here. Stark had said that he'd seen what was coming on the other side of the wormhole over New York… was this it? No wonder the man was scared to death. Scared enough to do anything, even try to use the Mind Stone, if he thought he could protect the earth from this…
"Steve," said Natasha. Her voice was wavering very slightly. "Whatever you just did, I think it would be a great idea if you did it again."
"What if we crash into the ground?" asked Steve.
"Then I guess we crash into the ground," Nat replied. She clearly thought that would be better than whatever awaited them here.
Steve reached for the circle icon, which had reappeared in the corner of the screen, but before he could touch it the starfield, which was now the largest screen, flicked back to being a side image. The one that took its place must have been some kind of communications screen, and it showed another Chi'Tauri Queen even more ornately armored than the last one, draped with metallic cloth and, Steve realized after a moment of horrified incomprehension, much, much bigger. What he'd initially taken for some kind of ornamental fence on either side of her was actually the tips of a line of the stafflike weapons, and the heads of the guards holding them barely came up to her waist. She was nearly twenty feet tall.
Loki and Thor grabbed the edges of the gunnery consoles to pull themselves out of her line of sight, while Natasha grabbed Steve and did her best to tuck both of them under the main navigation so they would not be seen. Perhaps they were not, but there was nowhere to hide the dead body of the smaller Queen. It was simply too big, and so remained plainly visible, floating inertly along with its own severed arm.
More holo-screens flicked to life, and Steve heard noises as machinery began working. The view of the bigger Queen vanished again and the armada reappeared, but this time it showed a blinking crosshair on an outer corner of the immense mothership. For a moment they seemed to be standing still, and then Steve felt the walls begin to undulate, and saw more stars vanish behind the outlines of the ships. They were moving towards the armada.
He glanced at Nat, then at Thor, then Loki. They were all injured to various degrees, beaten and bruised and exhausted. Nobody felt capable of another battle, but as Steve met each of his companions' eyes, he saw that none of them were willing to just give up. They would go down with whatever fight they had left in them… and that made Steve feel very proud of all of them, even Loki.
Loki reached out and retrieved the plasma rifle, which was floating nearby. He checked it, and then nodded. "Still has a charge," he said.
"Thor," Natasha said, "let's see if we can find some more weapons."
"I'll try to disengage the autopilot again," Steve decided.
He'd been able to do that earlier just by pushing hard enough on the steering column, so he tried that again. It was much more difficult now. In the lack of gravity he couldn't push against the floor, so when he tried to rotate the controls he ended up rotating himself. He tucked his knees under the edge of the console for leverage and then pushed as hard as he could, but it did nothing. The mothership had control, and was not going to relinquish it.
After a couple of minutes Thor and Natasha floated back up through the tunnels, and Nat handed Steve a plasma rifle. He could not gauge its weight while he and it both floated freely, but it did have a surprising amount of inertia. Steve thought he could use it as a club as easily as he could a gun. His arm was just barely long enough to reach the firing mechanism inside, and he understood why Loki had found it so awkward to aim.
"Where's the force field switch?" asked Nat.
"Here." Loki showed it to her, on the bottom of the device. "Just remember that it will not fire with the field activated."
"Got it," said Nat.
The mother ship was looming very large in the viewscreen now, like the Death Star dwarfing the Millennium Falcon. Steve wondered how big it was. It had to be at least the size of Manhattan. If one of these had come through to Earth, SHIELD's helicarriers would have looked like mosquitoes buzzing around it.
"My friends," said Thor. "It will be an honour to die by your sides."
"I would have counted it a greater honour not to have died at all," Loki observed.
"Same," said Nat.
Sounds both distant and loud echoed through the structure of the Leviathan as it docked. Steve heard metal scrape on metal, clicks and thumps of things sliding into place, and then, with a final dull, reverberating clang, the gravity came back on. The dead Queen's armored body hit the flour with a sound like dropping a bundle of pots and pans wrapped in a thick leather coat, and Steve squeaked in pain as he came down on his bad ankle, but quickly silenced himself again. Everybody double-checked their weapons.
Something below them rumbled. It must have been a door opening. Perhaps it was the Leviathan's mouth.
Heavy, leathery footsteps approached, very loud now that the swimming motion of the craft had ceased. The ladders creaked.
The first soldier poked its head through the entrance on Steve's left. Natasha took aim and shot it in the face. It dropped out of sight again, with a series of cries and thumps that suggested it had fallen on top of some of its fellows. A second soldier popped up on the right. Loki blasted that one.
The Chi'Tauri were not stupid, though – the next ones that appeared had their force fields on. That meant they couldn't shoot, but they also couldn't be shot, and Steve and the others would have to take them hand-to-hand. Thor tried Steve's move from the foyer at the Johnson Space Centre, throwing himself at Chi'Tauri's legs to knock it down. This worked, but the next alien behind it grabbed him and held him off the floor by one leg. Loki tried to hit one with the heavy plasma rifle, but the alien tore it off his arm.
It didn't take long, just a few desperate, panicky, painful seconds. None of them were in any shape to put up a meaningful fight. Soon Steve, too, was lifted off the ground, and his captor snarled in his face. This was it, he thought. He'd failed himself, he'd failed his friends, and he'd failed this actor named Chris Evans, whom he'd never even met…
But the Soldier who'd grabbed Steve did not kill him. It took his plasma rifle and threw it aside, then slung Steve over his shoulder like Santa Claus' sack of toys and slid back down the tunnel out of the cockpit. Others joined him, carrying Nat, Thor, and Loki. They weren't being killed, Steve realized, they were being captured.
Being carried with his backside in the air meant the blood was rushing to Steve's head and he was getting dizzy, but he tried to think anyway. Thanos wanted Loki – that was what Stan Lee had said. Maybe he'd decided he'd take the others, too, for standing in his way of getting him. Maybe it was the giant Queen, wanting revenge for the death of her smaller sister. Either way, it meant they weren't going to die quite yet, and that was an opportunity. All they needed was a plan.
Steve tried to think what they might do, but his body and brain were both on the verge of giving out. All he really wanted was to go to sleep. That was the most frustrating thing about this entire stupid mess they'd ended up in, that he had the will to fight, but not the means. Steve had spent his whole childhood wanting to fight for something and not being able to. After finally gaining the ability to make himself heard, the last thing he wanted was something keeping him down again.
That was a perfectly normal thought process for Steve Rogers, but at this particular moment, something about it was a revelation. Could that really be all there was to it? Somebody had once said that people had two reasons for doing things, the good reason and the real reasons. There were all kinds of good reasons why Steve didn't like the idea of Sokovia Accords, but could that be the root of it, and of all his self-sacrificing wanker behaviour? That Steve now felt if he could fight, he had to? To do otherwise would have been a betrayal of that skinny kid from Brooklyn who didn't know how to back down from bullies twice his size.
If Steve had known any psychologists, that would probably have been something to discuss with them, but he didn't, and he was probably never going to get the chance to unless he could come up with some kind of plan. He tried to force his brain back on track. When Stark had flown through a wormhole towards a Chi'Tauri armada, he'd been carrying a nuke on his shoulders. All Steve had was a body that wasn't even technically his. What would Stark do in this situation?
Dumb question. Stark would probably have built himself a new suit within twenty minutes of waking up in Bob Downey's body, and he'd probably have a way to detonate it and take the whole armada along. That didn't help Steve a bit.
They left the Leviathan, as Steve had expected, through its open mouth, and stepped out into a broad hallway that stretched off in both directions as far as the eye could see. There had to be a hundred craft docked up and down the space-facing side of it, their toothy jaws gaping open as if they were crocodiles waiting for some unwary fish to swim in. On the wall next to each entrance was a tall, narrow panel lit up with symbols and images that perhaps represented some kind of status report. Most of these displayed in pink, but Steve noticed that the one for the Leviathan they'd been on was blue. Did that indicate damage to the ship, or the fact that it had the wormhole-maker on board, or something else entirely?
The soldiers carried them a few hundred yards up the hallway, then got into an elevator. Steve was starting to hate elevators. At least this one wouldn't play music.
"If we are to be your prisoners," Thor said, "might we know where you are taking us?"
There was no reply.
The elevator had glass panels in the wall that showed rings of sickly pale purple lights flashing by, perhaps to mark each floor. Steve counted nine of these before one of the soldiers reached out and pulled a handle, bringing them to a halt. The doors opened in layers, like a beetle unfurling its wings, and their captors carried them into a wide, low room with rows upon row of transparent tubes between ceiling and floor. All of these were filled with thin gray fog, and some had a humanoid shape visible inside them. This was the brig.
The soldier carrying Loki was just behind the one carrying Steve, and rather than slinging him over its shoulder like a sack of flour, it was carrying him bridal-style, meaning the two could see one another. Loki had so far appeared to be unconscious, but now he raised his head a bit and caught Steve's eye, and Steve saw him wink.
"Fools!" a voice boomed out. "Did you really think your primitive prison could hold Loki of Asgard?"
The Chi'Tauri soldiers stopped and turned towards the sound – and there behind them, impossibly, was Loki. He was dressed in full Aesir regalia, gleaming with gold from the tips of his boots to the top of his horned helmet, and striding confidently towards them with his sceptre in his hand. Behind him, one of the tubes was standing open, the mist spilling out of it across the floor like dry ice fog.
"You forget!" this apparition declared. "In this reality I wield power over the elements! I will teach you not to forget that power again!"
That was right – they were back in their own universe now! Had Loki already switched back, or was this just Tom Hiddleston putting on a show? Steve tried to look at the other Loki for an answer, but the Soldiers holding on to both of them were facing in the wrong direction now, and Steve could no longer see him."
One of the other Chi'Tauri raised its plasma rifle and fired at the new Loki, but the figure vanished. A moment later, two of them reappeared on the other side of the group, and laughed.
"Thanos only wishes he were a god!" the two said, in perfect unison. Their voices echoed off the many surfaces in the room, doubling up over and over until they were difficult to understand. "Now he shall see a true god at work!"
Again, one tried shooting. Again, the image of Loki vanished, and two more appeared elsewhere. The Chi'Tauri clustered together, worried now.
More fog welled up out of the open tube, and began to fill the room. It came up as high as the aliens' knees, and Steve drew his own arms up so it wouldn't touch him. The Lokis held up their sceptres.
"To my, my Avengers!" they said.
Three shapes emerged from the fog. One was Thor, in armor and cape, Mjolnir in his hand, his long blond hair flowing behind him in an unseen breeze. Another was Natasha in her Black Widow suit, her hair red as fire and her batons at the ready with electricity crackling on their tips. The third, of course, was Steve himself, clean-shaved and dressed as Captain America with his shield on his arm. All three of them had their eyes glowing blue, the same colour as the gem in Loki's sceptre. The same way Barton's eyes had glowed while under the god's power.
That was when Steve realized – it was all an illusion. The only magic Loki was doing was manipulating light into shapes that weren't there.
It was enough to fool the Chi'Tauri, though. The images of Loki raised their sceptres and brought the ends down on the floor with a reverberating thud that was all out of proportion to the actual size of the implements. The phantom Avenger vanished, and then reappeared in among the group of Chi'Tauri soldiers. The Natasha spun her batons in a gesture the real one would have considered needlessly showy. The Thor raised his hammer, and lightning fizzled over his skin. The Steve prepared to throw his shield.
The aliens put down their prisoners and formed a circle around them – Steve, knowing what was coming, curled up on the floor with his hands over his head, and the firefight began. Bolts of plasma and even a few projectiles flew as the phantom Avengers vanished and reappeared, delivered a blow and then flickered away, over and over. Not a single shot hit its intended target. Instead, the Chi'Tauri realized too late that they were shooting at illusions, and those illusions were placed to make them fire on each other. As Lokis multiplied, cackling, and the other images flashed in and out, the aliens fell one by one until Steve and the others were surrounded only by the wounded and the dead.
Loki's maniacal laughter echoed as the phantoms faded away, until finally only a single image of the god remained. Then it, too, dissolved into silence.
The first to speak was Thor. "Fine work, Brother," he panted, as he got to his feet. "Fine work!"
Loki – the real Loki, still in Tom Hiddleston's body – was lying on his back, his chest heaving as if he could barely breathe. The lighting in the brig wasn't good, but Steve thought he could see blood on the man's lower lip. "You can give me my well-earned thanks later," he rasped. "Now, free our alternates!"
"Of course," said Thor. He grabbed one of the plasma rifles dropped by the dying Chi'Tauri, and went to check the nearest tube. There was nobody in it, so he moved on to the next, until he found one he must have liked the look of. He took aim and shot out a device attached to the base of it.
Natasha went to join him, but Steve was no longer sure he had the strength to walk, let alone lift one of the heavy alien weapons. Instead, he went to check on Loki. Whatever magic he'd just done, it had left Loki on the brink of exhaustion. He was not only panting but soaked in sweat, with his face so pale it was almost gray. Between that and his staring, bloodshot eyes, if Loki hadn't been visibly breathing Steve wouldn't have been sure he was even alive.
"Loki?" he asked.
"This body," Loki wheezed, voice hoarse. "Not accustomed… too much energy…"
"We'll get you out of here," Steve promised. He had no idea how they were going to do so now that they had two people who couldn't walk, never mind that they would have to take these actors with them and heaven knew what condition they were in. One way or another, though, he was determined to do it. Loki had now saved all their lives once, and Steve's personally for the second time. At least for the moment, Steve could put the Battle of New York behind him.
"You had best," said Loki.
Something hissed and gave off an electrical smell, and Steve looked up to see that Thor had the tube open. Out spilled a man in a long black coat, with dark hair sticking to his face and neck – it was Loki as they'd last seen him in their own world, standing in front of the rune stone disguised in Midgardian clothes. He fell on the floor in a boneless heap, and Thor rolled him over and gave him a shake.
"Wake up, Tom Hiddleston!" he ordered.
The brig had excellent acoustics, probably on purpose – a prison was not a place where you wanted people whispering secrets – so Steve could hear quite clearly when a weak voice croaked, "Chris?"
"No, I am Thor!" was the pleased reply. "My brother and I have come to help you." He propped Hiddleston up against the base of an empty prison tube. "I shall free the others, and come back for you," he promised.
Meanwhile, Natasha had forced a second tube open, and freed Scarlett Johansson. Whatever kind of stasis the Chi'Tauri kept their prisoners in, it couldn't be a comfortable one – like Hiddleston, she immediately slumped to the floor, coughing and gasping. Nat patted her back a couple of times and took her pulse at the wrist, then went on to the next tube.
Thor next freed Chris Hemsworth, who staggered out sputtering and gasping but apparently in better shape than the others. He was wearing the sweatshirt and jeans they'd last seen Thor in, although he somehow managed to look more like a normal person in them than Thor possibly could. He didn't fall over, but he did have to lean on his own knees a minute to catch his breath before he could look up at his rescuer. There was a moment of silence and then Hemsworth said, in a distinctly Australian accent, "oh, shit."
"No need for obscenity, Chris Hemsworth," Thor assured him. "We have come to rescue you."
Hemsworth pointed at him. "Are you…?"
"I am!" said Thor, "and delighted to meet he who was thought worthy to represent me on film."
Natasha opened a final tube. Out stumbled a tall man with a short beard and his hair dyed brown, dressed in a Brooklyn Dodgers t-shirt and a pair of jeans with a hole in one knee. Nat grabbed his arm, and Thor helped her guide him over to the others.
"We must hurry," Thor warned them. "Collect yourselves. The Chi'Tauri will be upon us at any moment."
"Oh, my god, I wasn't dreaming," said Scarlett. She was sitting up now, looking around like a caged and frightened animal. Then her eyes found Natasha, and her mouth fell open in shock.
"You're still not dreaming," Nat told her. "We'll explain when we're not in mortal peril."
"I think I can figure it out," Scarlett replied warily. "I'm just not sure I believe it."
Although they'd come out of stasis in a bad way, the actors seemed to recover quickly – maybe it was because they were in bodies with physical enhancements and powers that Steve, Thor, Nat, and Loki currently lacked. Soon all of them were on their feet, except for Hiddleston. He was still curled up and shivering as if feverish. Hemsworth and Evans got him to his feet, but he just hung limply between them.
"Loki," said Steve, squeezing the god's shoulder. "Wake up. We need you to do some more magic, get us back to the Leviathan." They could hear echoing footsteps now. The Chi'Tauri reinforcements were on their way. There were probably a lot of reasons why magic was not the best plan, but it was all they had.
Unfortunately, there was no response. The magic Loki had already done had simply been too much for his mortal body, and he was out cold.