Tyro Vogel - The Girl with the Scarab Necklace

“This is Revan’s flagship, the Interdictor-class cruiser Moonshade , the Bane of the Republic, “Jared said. “Revan’s going to board us, and then he will do as he pleases. He is too powerful,” Jared said. “But don’t give up without a fight.”

Me and Jane looked at each other. Today was getting worse by the year. “We never do,” I said.

It had happened like Jared told us it would: our ship was pulled into the belly of the Moonshade , and as our space-faring vehicle entered what could have only be called a hangar bay, I saw Revan’s small, V-like ship fly past us into the hangar.

This was very possibly the end to our adventure: failure and defeat at the hands of the Dark Jedi they called Darth Revan and the end to my chance with Jane. I braced myself against negative thoughts and followed Jared out of of the trapdoor. It was too late to pretend giving up was ever an option.

The three of us climbed down to the hangar’s steel floor, its plates polished to a glimmering shine. Darth Revan’s starfighter stood in some distance like an upsided V. A hatch opened, and the man in the mask jumped out, landing softly on the floor, the only sound: the buzz of his blood orange light sword as the energy blade extended from the hilt. He held the sword in one hand, slightly to the side, his posture relaxed, the black hood lowered over his head.

“What are you waiting for?” Jared asked.

“The correct moment,” Darth Revan replied.

I heard another light sword ignite, and it wasn’t Jared’s. Another man stepped out from behind Revan’s ship and took place at his side: a bald man in his thirties, armed with a red light sword. His rage was almost tangible: I could feel it the air, rage directed at everything and everyone . Here I knew was another man who would never stop, and for whom murder was but means to an end.

“They are the Sith,” Jared said. “The Master and The Apprentice. There are always two.”

Jane had two bullets, I had my rifle, and Revan and his companion stood far enough to risk our lives on something I’d hoped they wouldn’t expect. I raised my concussion rifle , as I’d dubbed it, pointing the barrel at Revan’s ship, and was about to pull the trigger when some invisible force ripped the weapon out of my grip and sent it hurling towards Jared.

He barely had time to use his energy sword to cut through the improvised projectile when I’d felt the dreaded prickling in my skin I’d felt when Revan had paralyzed me. Jared remained unphased, his sword pointed at Darth Revan’s head.

The bald man next to Darth Revan was smiling.

“It’s never that easy,” Darth Revan said, mirroring Jared’s sword stance.

The screech I’d learnt to associate with the TARDIS skipped its usual three second warm-up and assaulted our ears at once, the sound reverberating through the metal hangar as the blue booth with the text POLICE CALL BOX appeared by Darth Revan. The door flew open, hitting the stunned Dark Jedi’s sword-wielding hand and driving it upwards – right into his Apprentice’s jaw.

What happened next wasn’t pretty.

I flinched, watching the energy separate flesh from bone in one clean cut. The Apprentice fell before he could scream. His sword fell, extinguished, and only his fingers clawed the floor in silent agony. The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS. “Actually, sometimes it really is easy,” he said, waving his small cylindrical tube at Revan. “Do you know what this is?”

The Dark Jedi wrapped his other hand around the hilt of his sword. He reminded me of a cobra, coiled for a strike. “No,” he said in his loud whisper, “Immortal, I do not. I also do not see how it can stop me.”

“This, my friend Sith Lord Darth Revan, is a sonic screwdriver. You, who are soon to be known as Revanchist, reviled as Revan the Butcher, and praised as the Prodigal Knight should know better than to mess with a sonic screwdriver!”

The Sith Lord Darth Revan had not moved an inch.

“Okay,” The Doctor said, fiddling with his bowtie with his free hand. “Okay, it won’t really stop you, I admit.” He put the cylindrical device back into his suit’s inside pocket. “Nope, won’t stop you at all. Good thing I don’t have to stop you, Sith Lord. We want the same thing.”

“Is that right?”

The Doctor’s lips tightened into a line. “I want to heal the damage done to the universe,” he said. Darth Revan continued to stand motionless.

“How?”

“The Impossible Girl,” said The Doctor.

We all looked at Jane. She gripped the handle of her pistol tighter. A drop of sweat rolled down her cheek. Or was it a teardrop?

Cool under fire, I thought, as if she could hear me think, that’s who we are.

“What about the Impossible Girl?”

“I take her with me to a different place. Her and Mr. Adam Smith over here.”

“And what do I get?”

“Peace of mind knowing that you’ve helped make the universe a better place?”

“That is not enough,” Darth Revan said, the soft voice from under his mask bypassing my ears and reaching directly into my mind. “I want the girl.”

“You can’t have the girl,” I said.

The Doctor said, “Sorry, Adam… I’m afraid we can’t have her either. She can go to a different place with us, but never a different time. Not our time, at any rate. She wouldn’t exist.”

“What?”

“She is a girl who was never supposed to exist and yet who changed the entire course of time and space for billion of years into both the past and the future. She can’t come back to the twentieth century Chicago; after Sherlock Holmes fixes the time stream, she would no longer exist.”

“We can’t just leave her!”

“It’s the only way, Adam.”

“Are the two of you done whining now?” Darth Revan asked. “I take the girl. I take the man. And I take your little spaceship box that IG-68 had so miserably failed to acquire, and then I let you live. Maybe. I think it’s a fair bargain.”

“Like hell!” Jane said, and shot twice into his face. Sparks flew as the bullets ricocheted off the metal, jerking Revan’s hood off his helmet. I grabbed Jane’s arm and ran for the TARDIS, but as I was about to drag her through the door, something jerked her back, sending her flying back towards Darth Revan. I saw the fear in her eyes as The Doctor pulled me inside. The door shut closed. “Nooooooooooooo!” I screamed.

I don’t know exactly how much time passed after I’d stopped trying to pry the door open. It was useless. All useless. I was alone.

“There was no time,” said the Doctor after a while. “I am sorry.”

The method to fixing the universe turned out to have been simpler and more elegant than I could’ve imagined, though at this point it felt like the entire universe no longer mattered.

The Doctor had transported myself and both versions of Sherlock Holmes (the two of whom chattered on subjects too numerous to list without pause or tiring) to year 1891, Switzerland, Reichenbach Falls.

The Doctor had left Watson in year 1903. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

The older Holmes looked at the path leading from the TARDIS and down to the waterfall, where his deadliest foe Professor Moriarity awaited… a foe whom he had bested once, and whom he knew he wouldn’t be besting again. Not so completely at any rate.

“If Sherlock Holmes has to die,” he said, lighting up his pipe, “then so be it. As long as the world has at least one Holmes. I believe I already wrote my letter…” He winked at his younger self.

The two said no more, and the older man headed down the path. He stopped mid-way, turned, raised his deerstalker cap, and continued on, never to look back again.