"Far, Far Away..." - Part Four

Part Four

            Djarin was surprised the Crest’s clearance code, which permitted him to land in Spaceport THX1138’s main terminal, managed to check out. There was no determining when they arrived in the galaxy. It could’ve been into the distant past or the far future. One way or another, he and his crewmates would soon find out.

            Just as he landed the Crest, he heard Gen cry out from the cargo hold, “They’re gone!”

            Djarin shot up from the pilot’s chair. “What?!” He rushed into the hold, finding only Gen there. The blue “police box” that had once taken up much of the cargo space was no longer in plain sight. Djarin was particularly alarmed and angered to see that the child was missing as well. “Where did he take him?”

            “I don’t know,” Gen said in a whisper.

            She suddenly found herself at the mercy of the infuriated Mandalorian as he pinned her against the wall with his blaster aimed for her head. Again he asked, more threateningly, “Where did he take him?!”

            “I said, ‘I don’t know’!” Gen yelled, her frustration just as evident as Djarin’s. “Look! I’m as confused and upset as you are! In case you haven’t noticed, I got left behind, too!”

            Having a moment to reflect on her logical rebuttal, Djarin backed off from her and holstered his blaster. Free from his hostility, Gen considered the situation in a calm, rational manner.

            “I don’t believe it was intentional,” she resolved. “It’s got to be a result of the latest warp we went through. Somehow, the TARDIS got lost in transit, possibly due to its temporal and dimensional properties.”

            “You want to try and explain that in a language I understand?” Djarin urged.

            Gen groaned and reiterated, “What I’m saying is that, because the TARDIS is already a time machine itself, it was influenced one too many times by the vortex we’ve been jumping through. If I were to make an educated guess, I’d say its HADS function kicked in, during that last jump.”

            “HADS?” Djarin inquired of the bizarre acronym.

            “Hostile Action Displacement System,” Gen spelled out. “When the TARDIS is under attack, even from an unusual energy source capable of time manipulation, it dematerializes and then rematerializes a short distance away after the threat disappears.”

            Djarin tried to comprehend the complexity of it all. “You’re saying that box is capable of disappearing and reappearing in and out of places?”

            “Of course,” Gen confirmed. “How else did you think it got aboard your ship?”

            Inside his helmet, Djarin’s head was spinning. “Alright, so…you said that it rematerializes a short distance from where it dematerialized. Does that mean it could have made it here on this spaceport before we did?”

            “Only one way to find out,” Gen answered with a shrug.

            She and Djarin disembarked from the Crest and commenced in asking the other pilots around the main terminal if they had seen a blue box marked “police” that passed through a wormhole. The description baffled a few and the translation was misconstrued with some others. Not a single pilot in the terminal ever seen or heard of such a ship or knew what a “wormhole” looked like.

            Their questioning soon drew the attention of a wookiee who beckoned Djarin and Gen to follow him over to his ship – the only one in the terminal that stood out with its rather junky-looking hull. Waiting there at the ship’s ramp was a young woman in white garments with her hair done up in a series of mini-buns that ran along the back of her head.

            “My name is Rey,” she introduced herself. She then nodded to the wookiee and added, “Chewie tells me that you both have seen the vortex.”

            “You’ve passed through it, too?” Gen queried.

            Rey nodded. “Not long before we arrived here in the Falcon. The strangest part is how outdated many of the ships docked in this spaceport appear to be. That and the fact no one here knows of the First Order or the Resistance. All they can talk about is the Rebellion and their fight with the Empire…but that conflict ended 30 years ago.”

            Djarin stiffened. “Did you say ‘30 years ago’?”

            “That’d mean you two are from the future!” Gen deduced of Rey and Chewie.

            Rey frowned at her words. “From the future? What do you mean?”

            Before any explanation could be offered to her and her wookiee co-pilot, all activity in the main terminal ceased just as a Lambda-class T-4a Imperial shuttle landed not far from where the Crest was docked. A contingent of Stormtroopers stormed down the ramp as soon as it was lowered, forming around the Crest with their rifles aimed on the ship. They were followed by a dark, menacing figure whose mechanized breathing reverberated across the stilled space.

            Rey couldn’t believe it when she heard and saw him. “Vader,” she gasped. “How is that possible?” Chewie concurred on her inquiry with a baffled wail.

            “This may sound crazy, but that vortex you guys passed through…it brought you back in time,” Gen explained.

            “That does sound crazy,” Rey remarked. “Then again, I’ve learned how much this galaxy’s full of crazy mysteries.”

            Djarin watched as Vader and the troopers raided the Crest. He didn’t know what interest the Empire had in his ship until one of the troopers approached Vader and informed, “The capsule isn’t on the ship, Lord Vader.”

            “Capsule?” Djarin pondered aloud.

            It didn’t take long for Gen to discern what the trooper was referring to. “He means the TARDIS,” she told Djarin, dismay registering on her face. “I guess word’s gotten around about it after the two time periods we visited. But why is the Empire so interested in it?”

            Her concern dulled when they heard Vader order the troopers, “Have this ship destroyed. It is no longer any use to us.”

            Djarin refused to stand by and allow the Empire to destroy the Crest.

            However, as he was on the verge of rushing towards Vader and the troopers, the terminal was suddenly bombarded by another faction: a peculiar group of droids that Djarin, Rey, Chewie, Vader, nor anyone else in the spaceport had ever seen before. Gen, on the other hand, was able to identify them by name: “Daleks!”

            One Dalek poised closest to Vader screeched, “WE’VE COME FOR THE DOCTOR AND HIS TARDIS! WE’VE DETECTED THEIR ENERGY SIGNATURE TO THIS POINT IN THIS DESIGNATED DIMENSION!”

            Vader eyed the unusual being forebodingly. “I don’t know what you are, creature, but I will not allow you take the Emperor’s prize.”

            “THEN YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!”

            The Daleks opened fire on Vader and the troopers, ensuing in a spontaneous onslaught within Spaceport THX1138. With his lightsaber, Vader swatted away the death rays shot in his direction and managed to deflect a few back at the Daleks that demolished them. None of the Stormtroopers’ laser fire had much effect on the Daleks, bouncing off their Dalekanium shells. Their inability in stopping them ultimately led to very many being killed by death rays, their skeletal structures briefly glowing beneath their white-plated armors as they were struck.

            Strange as this turnabout was, it was just the distraction Djarin, Gen, Rey, and Chewie needed to escape. “Follow the Falcon as soon as your ship is away from the spaceport,” Rey instructed Gen and the Mandalorian.

            While Rey and Chewie prepped the Falcon for takeoff, Gen and Djarin went straight for the Crest. Their desperate act didn’t go unnoticed by Vader. The Dark Lord swiftly advanced on them, prompting Gen to react in defense by igniting her lightsaber. It clashed against Vader’s with such intensity that her knees buckled.

            At the corner of her eye, she noticed Djarin hesitating along the ramp. “Get…the ship…airborne!” she strained in her command, feigning off Vader for as long as she could. She was so focused on the Dark Lord that she could only hope Djarin did as she ordered and started up the Crest.

            The second she heard its engines roar to life, she regained enough of her charge to unleash on Vader with stronger attacks. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much to match with the Dark Lord’s impeccable might, powered by the Dark Side of the Force. The hilt of her lightsaber was slashed right out of her hand, rendering it useless to her.

            Completely defenseless, she stood before Vader, who raised his blood-red saber high above his black helmeted head to cut Gen in two. And then he was disrupted by an incredible tremor that rocked the entire spaceport. Its entire structure lurched over to one side, toppling anything that wasn’t bolted down.

            Spared from certain death, Gen jumped aboard the airborne Crest. The gunship rocketed out of the lurching main terminal, along with Rey and Chewie’s ship – the hunk of junk they called “the Falcon.” Their departures led them into discovering what caused the ruckus in the terminal when they spotted another vortex looming over the spaceport.

            This was the biggest one yet, roughly the size of a planet. Its gravitational pull was massive, vacuuming up a multitude of ships that attempted escape, only to be ripped apart. One Star Destroyer that orbited the spaceport – undoubtedly the one Vader’s shuttle arrived from – was torn to shreds as it was caught in the vacuum.

            Djarin knew the same fate would befall the Crest and the Falcon. “We won’t survive this one. It’s too strong.”

            Gen looked on the other ships, noting the way in which they were shredded. Each one tried flying away from the vortex instead of towards it. “They’re fighting against the inevitable,” she verbally analyzed. “We have to fly into it.”

            “That’s suicide,” Djarin told her.

            “That’s the way. It’s the only way.”

            The Mandalorian looked in her aquamarine eyes, seeing the conviction in them. Even though he had only known her for so little time, he trusted her intuition. With a nod, he acknowledged, “This is the way.”

            Relaying the plan over the comm to Rey and Chewie, the Crest and the Falcon plotted a direct course into the planet-sized time vortex. They lost all control the closer they got. The spiral was more overwhelming this time – the Crest and Falcon passengers sensing every part of their bodies stretched in literal fashion. It was a nauseating, painful experience.

            It was also the beginning of an uncharted journey.

"Far, Far Away..." - Part Three

Part Three

            “Taun We?” Jango addressed the Kaminoan. “What’s going on here?”

            Taun We inanely gazed back and forth between Jango and Djarin, the latter of who stood firm after his ruse was short-lived. “I thought he was you, Jango,” Taun We explained. “I will call security right away.”

            Jango raised one hand in protest. “No need,” he told Taun We. “I can handle this.”

            Djarin examined Jango’s living quarters. He noticed a boy standing at the foot of what he presumed to be the bedroom. At the floor of the bedroom sat a few pieces of Mandalorian armor. It suddenly made sense to Djarin how Taun We easily mistook him for Jango.

            “Where did you get this armor?” Djarin asked him, pointing directly to it.

            “Where did you get yours?” Jango deflected.

            Gen and the Doctor intently watched the exchange between the two men, sensing how much the tension swelled in the air with every word.

            “I earned it from the Children of the Watch,” Djarin answered.

            “Never heard of them,” Jango said.

            There was a long pause before Djarin asked again – with a more intense tone, “Where did you get the armor?”

            Jango didn’t answer. Instead, he gave an order to the boy who he shared his living quarters with. The order was given in an alien language, which Djarin recognized to be the language of the Hutts, common within the Outer Rim territories.

            Fett then offered to Djarin, “How ‘bout a trade? I’ll tell you where I got my armor…in exchange to see who you are underneath that helmet.”

            Djarin tensed up. “No deal.”

            Jango again gave the boy another order in Huttese and, in the blink of an eye, the boy pointed a blaster right at the head of the child. Gen, Djarin, and the Doctor reacted accordingly, with Gen in particular speaking in defense of Djarin, “You’d force a man to surrender his pride for a simple answer?!”

            “The answer doesn’t seem so ‘simple’ to men like us,” Jango told her. He then smirked as he asked Djarin, “That’s the way, isn’t it, Mando?”

            There was much hesitation in Djarin. This “Jango Fett” was a crafty one. He saw all the angles of the situation from the moment Djarin stepped inside with Gen, the Doctor, and the child – singling out the most vulnerable of the Mandalorian’s companions.

            “Alright,” Djarin finally decided. “You have a deal.”

            Djarin removed the helmet of his armor, made out of the same beskar material that he received from the bounty on the child. Jango and everyone else in the room looked on the true face of Din Djarin: a human male in prime age with short dark hair, brown eyes, tan skin, and bits of facial hair.

            Jango took a long, hard look at Djarin’s face and uttered flaccidly, “I expected better. You can put the helmet back on.” And, like an obedient slave to his master, Djarin did as he was told. Jango ordered the boy to lower his weapon from the child and, holding to the deal he made with Djarin, he shared his story:

            “I was a foundling…raised in the ways of the Mandalorians just as you were, my friend. I fought in their Civil War as a commando before eventually turning to a career in bounty hunting. That, of course, led to the life I’m living now here on Kamino with my son, Boba.”

            He nodded to the boy who he had been ordering in the last few moments.

            “Admittedly, there’s much I would love to know about you, Mando,” Jango continued. “But I’m afraid our business here must end. There are things happening in this city that neither you nor your friends should trouble yourselves with…or else I will have no choice but to kill all of you for it.”

            Not taking Jango’s warning lightly, the trespassers departed from Tipoca City and Kamino altogether in the Crest. During the takeoff, there was uncomfortable silence within the cockpit. Although his helmet hid it well, Gen and the Doctor were certain their encounter with Jango Fett left its mark on Djarin.

            “I should go and check on the TARDIS,” the Doctor excused himself, obviously unable to take the awkwardness any longer. He turned to the child and asked, “You wanna come with me, yeah?” He got his answer from the child’s reaction: his small, pointed green ears turning up in interest.

            Shortly after the Doctor and the child left the cockpit, Gen did what she could to help put Djarin’s mind at ease. “Jango’s nothing but a bully,” she consoled him. “He had no right telling you to take your helmet off.” Djarin didn’t respond to her comments, so she went the extra route and told him, “If it’s any comfort, I think you look handsome without it.”

            “Are you making fun of me?” he retorted, half-turning her way in his pilot chair.

            Gen jolted in panic. “N-No,” she stammered. “I was only trying to…”

            “The Children of the Watch have a code: if I ever removed my helmet in front of anyone, I would not be allowed to put it back on again or ever considered to be a true Mandalorian.”

            “I understand,” Gen acknowledged with a nod. “But, just to state the obvious here, you did put it back on when Jango told you to.”

            “His ways are not my ways,” Djarin said.

            All of the sudden, the Crest’s alarms blared. Gen and Djarin noticed why as soon as another time vortex opened in front of them, much larger in size than the last one. Just as before, they were caught in its gravitational pull and sent spiraling into another unspecified period in the galaxy.

            Once they recovered, they saw a space station in their trajectory.

            “At least we were taken somewhere to dock to get our bearings,” Gen noted.

            Djarin wholeheartedly agreed, which was why he immediately piloted the Crest into the spaceport’s main terminal. As he did so, Gen went to check on the Doctor and the child, only to discover that they were nowhere to be seen in the ship – and neither was the Doctor’s TARDIS.

"Far, Far Away..." - Part Two

Part Two

            The Crest was pulled directly into the main hangar of the Trade Federation battleship. Upon making its artificial landing, the Doctor instructed Djarin and Gen, “No matter what happens, no one engages.”

            Djarin already had his blaster drawn as the Doctor made this demand. “If they engage first, I’m not making any promises,” he said as he reluctantly holstered the blaster.

            They disembarked from the ship to the audience of a Battle Droid platoon, each and every droid soldier aiming their blaster rifles at the four individuals. The commanding officer among them ordered for Djarin, the Doctor, Gen, and the child to be searched, disarmed, and escorted to the bridge, to which one soldier responded with, “Roger, Roger.”

            On the bridge, they were brought to a pair of Neimoidians: Viceroy Nute Gunray and his right-hand man, Rune Haako. “We expected Jedi ambassadors,” Gunray addressed. “But you four are clearly not Jedi. In fact, one of you is a Mandalorian.” The Viceroy then directed his attention towards the child, edging closer towards him with his large, inspecting red eyes. “This little one looks familiar.”

            Djarin tensed up as the Viceroy analyzed the child. Noticing this, the Doctor whispered to the Mandalorian, “Stay calm.”

            “If I didn’t know better, I would say this child looks like…” Gunray gasped in recognition. “Jedi Master Yoda!”

            “Then these interlopers are affiliated with the Jedi,” Rune Haako surmised. “Lord Sidious will be most pleased to hear of this development.”

            “Droids!” Gunray beckoned. “Take the Mandalorian, the woman, and the man into the holding. Leave the child with us.”

            “Roger, Roger,” the Battle Droid acknowledged.

            When the Battle Droids moved in to take Djarin, Gen, and the Doctor away, three of them were suddenly beheaded by a lightsaber…wielded by Gen!

            “Why have they not been disarmed?!” the enraged Viceroy asked.

            “We did disarm them!” One of the Battle Droids claimed.

            Even the Doctor was surprised to see Gen wielding the legendary Jedi weapon. “Where’ve you been keeping that this whole time?!” he asked her.

            Gen blushed as she answered, “You don’t wanna know.”

            Djarin could not care less where Gen had been hiding the lightsaber. It was just the distraction he needed as he activated his left vambrace (another thing that the Battle Droids failed to confiscate) and released several whistling birds. The small guided munitions flew through the air, whistling before striking each of the Battle Droids and destroying them with small explosions.

            While he should’ve been displeased with this violent turn of events, the Doctor was rather impressed with how flawlessly Djarin and Gen disposed of the Battle Droids. “Let’s go!” he told the two, gathering their confiscated gear and leaving the bridge together with the Child. He could hear the furious Viceroy Gunray behind them, barking for the escapees not to be allowed to leave the ship.

            Working their way through the ship corridors, Djarin declared, “We’ve got to get away from these Clone War fanatics.”

            “They’re not fanatics,” Gen told him. “You still don’t believe you’ve actually traveled back in time!”

            “What I believe is this whole thing’s insane,” Djarin retorted.

            They suddenly stopped in their tracks when they heard mechanical rolling resounding from the nearest corner. There emerged two new droids, rolling like balls in one second before standing on three legs in the next, armed with twin repeating blaster cannons and shield generators.

            “Droidekas,” Gen identified them. “Yeah, it’s gotten even more insane.”

            “Don’t worry, I got this,” the Doctor said, stepping forward and pointing his sonic screwdriver at the Droidekas. As it pulsed in his hand, the Droidekas immediately shut down, their blaster cannons and shield generators deactivated.

            This action took Djarin by surprise. “How did you do that?”

            “By simply reversing the polarity,” the Doctor explained with a smile. “Now, for my next trick…” The sonic pulsed in his grip again and the Droidekas were reactivated. However, instead of attacking the escapees, they rolled right past them.

            “Where are they going?” Gen asked.

            “After those other droids,” the Doctor said. “I just gave us plenty of time to get back to Mando’s ship.”

            As the Doctor proceeded to lead the way, Djarin paused for a moment to tell Gen, “You ‘Time Lords’ are full of surprises.”

            “Stick around and you may start to love us,” Gen teased.

            “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Djarin remarked.

            The Doctor’s reprogramming of the Droidekas worked to perfection, offering them a clear path straight back to the main hangar. Just as they arrived there, they spotted another transport making a clear albeit voluntary landing not too far from where the Crest was docked.

            Two hooded figures disembarked from the transport. “Jedi,” Djarin noted.

            Gen heard the child cooing and noticed him reaching his tiny arms towards the two Jedi. “No, no,” she gingerly told him. “Those aren’t the Jedi you’re looking for.”

            Unable to allow themselves to be distracted any longer, the travelers rushed to the Crest and boarded the ship. Djarin immediately went to the cockpit and fired up the engines, taking them out of the hangar and away from the Trade Federation battleship. For a while, it appeared as if they would make a clean getaway.

            And then the Crest detected a fleet of ships approaching from behind.

            “Here come the vultures,” Djarin stated.

            “Can we shake them?” Gen inquired.

            “There are twelve of them,” Djarin told her. “We’d have to be lucky to even try.”

            “How much longer ‘til we can go into lightspeed?” the Doctor asked.

            “Not long enough,” Djarin answered.

            It was evident in the dreariness of the Mandalorian’s responses that the odds were not in their favor.

            They needed a miracle or, considering the realm they were in, the Force.

            However, fate gave them an entirely different way out of their predicament.

            That unusual nebula Djarin had seen before materializing once again in front of his ship, starting out like a small mist (as it did before) until growing into a giant swirling vortex, although not quite as large as the first one. The Time Lords called it a “wormhole” with a vacuum powerful enough to suck the Crest right in.

            Once again, the gunship was sent into a spiral that overwhelmed its passengers.

            Enduring the trip rendered them into an unconscious state, which lasted for half an hour. As soon as they regained cognizance, they discovered that the Crest was in orbit of another aquatic-looking planet with no sign of Trade Federation ships around them.

            “Seems like that wormhole just saved our butts,” Gen noted. “And yet, there’s no telling how far back or forward through time it sent us.”

            “Are you going to start that again?” the disgruntled Djarin said.

            “If you don’t believe me, then why don’t you go down there and see for yourself,” Gen challenged, pointing to the aquatic planet ahead of them.

            Accepting her challenge, Djarin descended the Crest towards the planet.

            Upon closer examination, they could see it was definitely a water planet with an endless raging ocean and a fierce rainstorm. The only land Djarin saw to dock his ship was a city held above the ocean surface by stilt structures.

            Djarin, the Doctor, Gen, and the child briefly braved the harsh rainstorm after getting out from the Crest. Although Djarin’s armor and the child’s floating pod kept the both of them dry, Gen and the Doctor were completely drenched by the time they all entered one of the city’s domes.

            “I already hate this place,” Gen uttered, shivering and sneezing.

            “Jango,” a soft-spoken voice addressed them. They each turned to see a slender, towering, pale-skinned humanoid approach. It was a female Kaminoan staring specifically at Djarin with her large, almond-shaped black eyes. “You did not tell us you would be leaving. Where did you go?”

            The Kaminoan clearly had Djarin mistaken for someone else. Regardless, he decided to take advantage of the mistaken identity and answer, “I was on…a quick errand.”

            “I see,” the Kaminoan accepted. Her eyes then looked over Gen, the Doctor, and the child. “And these guests…are they with you?”

            “Yes,” Djarin replied. “If you don’t mind, we have some important business.”

            “Of course, Jango,” the Kaminoan said. “I will escort you back to your quarters.”

            The deception seemed to be working well so far, though neither Gen nor the Doctor imagined it would last for very long. And it soon turned out that the Time Lords were right in their doubt when they arrived in Jango’s living quarters…

            …with the real Jango already there.

"Far, Far Away..." - Part One

Part One

            Din Djarin’s mission was clear: bring the child to his people – the Jedi.

            Quite some time had passed since the Mandalorian found the child on Arvala-7, having accepted a contract to retrieve him for Imperial clients. It was a contract that Djarin never kept, forming a bond with the child and protecting him from those in the galaxy that wished to collect on the high bounty for him (and for Djarin as well). As a result, the child became a Mandalorian foundling and a part of Djarin’s small clan – Clan Mudhorn.

            The child sat with him in the cockpit of his gunship, the Razor Crest, where he often enjoyed playing with a knob from the controls. They were on a relatively casual flight across the stars when Djarin noticed some activity just ahead of them. An unusual nebula materialized. It was small at first, appearing nothing more than a light mist in space. And then it grew bigger and bigger, until it turned into a giant swirling vortex.

            “What the…?!” Djarin exclaimed as he suddenly felt his ship being pulled by the vortex, shaking violently. He briefly looked to the child and told him, “Hang on, kid. I’m gonna get us out of this.” He did his best to turn the Crest around and fly away from the vortex, but its gravitational pull was so strong, there was nothing more Djarin could do to avoid it.

            The Crest was sucked right in, sending the gunship into a spiral that overwhelmed its two passengers.

---------------------

            Djarin awoke sometime later, after falling into unconsciousness at some point during the spiral through the vortex. He looked out the cockpit window and discovered they were back in space. However, now they were in orbit of a blue watery planet. Djarin couldn’t tell which one it was; after so many travels, they all sort of looked the same to the Mandalorian.

            The Crest had been shut down from the rough ride, but it was nothing Djarin couldn’t handle. His first priority was to make sure the child was alright. “You O.K., kid?” When he turned to check on him, he was shocked to see that he wasn’t sitting in his seat. Djarin shot up from the pilot’s chair, looking around the cockpit to see if the child hadn’t been thrown into another part of it. It was relatively small cabin space, so he wouldn’t have been flung too far.

            Unfortunately, Djarin couldn’t see any sign of him in the cockpit.

            His next assumption was that the child woke up much earlier than he did and wandered to another part of the ship. Following on this, he walked out of the cockpit and into the cargo hold. As he walked in, he was stopped cold once he noticed something that wasn’t there when they took off: a blue box marked “police box.”

            “Where did you come from?” he wondered aloud as he descended the ladder and approached the blue box, his blaster drawn.

            One of the box’s doors was opened, inviting the cautious Mandalorian to walk right into a space that was somehow much bigger than the box itself. Passing through the doorway, he stepped inside of a bizarre room that hummed with life, supported by six coral pillars arranged in a hexagonal pattern that met at the room’s ceiling. The walls were golden with small hexagonal impressions. Djarin walked up a red-tiled ramp leading from the doors to a hexagonal platform. On the platform was a second, circular platform. A set of seats were situated on the other side of the platform.

            Sitting in one of the seats was a young blonde, and sitting on her lap was the child.

            Djarin aimed his blaster at the woman’s head and demanded, “Hand him over.”

            The blonde turned her head, her ponytail swinging from the motion. Her fresh young face, basked with a delightful smile as she played with the child, had now transfixed into a mortified glower.

            “There’s no need for that,” he heard a man’s accented voice tell him. It spoke from beyond the control console situated at the center of the platform. It concealed the figure of a man standing over six feet tall with pale blue eyes, strong cheekbones, and dark brown hair that he wore close-cropped. He also had rather large ears. He looked to his blond companion and ordered, “Hand the baby over, Gen.”

            “Sure…I would’ve gladly done it anyway, if I didn’t have a gun pointed at my head,” the snarky blonde remarked, getting up from her seat and handing the child back to Djarin. She gave one last gentle smile to the child before glaring at his Mandalorian guardian.

            Holstering his blaster, Djarin gazed over the bizarre room again. “What kind of ship is this?”

            “It’s called a TARDIS – short for ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space’,” the man said while approaching Djarin with his hand outstretched for a handshake. “I’m the Doctor, by the way.” He then gestured to his blond companion. “This is Neas, but she goes by ‘Gen’ in this version of her.”

            “Version?” Djarin hung on the word, looking at Gen. “You’re a Clawdite?”

            “I’m a Time Lord,” Gen retorted, still harboring ill-will towards Djarin for the blaster. She nodded to the Doctor and added, “And so is he.”

            “I’ve never heard of your kind before,” Djarin admitted.

            “You wouldn’t have,” the Doctor told him. “No Time Lords exist in this reality… and none exist in ours either.” He spoke with much solemnity on that last detail.

            Djarin still couldn’t get past the strange dimensions of the blue box. “How did you get this ‘ship’ of yours into mine while we were in transit? You couldn’t have bypassed the docking ramp from outside…could you?”

            “The TARDIS can travel anywhere in anyplace at any time,” Gen explained.

            “That, of course, is beside the point of our discussion,” the Doctor dodged. “The wormhole your ship was caught in…tell us about it.”

            “Worm…hole?” Djarin never heard such a term to describe what he had seen moments ago. “You mean that weird vortex that took us in? All I know about it is that we were lucky to have still been in one piece after we passed through it.” He gazed hard on the two Time Lords and inquired, “Why? Do either of you know more about it?”

            After a moment’s pause, Gen told him, “It was a tear in the fabric of space and time. The Doctor and I have been randomly finding them throughout different time periods of this dimension…and they get bigger much further into the future.”

            The disbelieving Djarin shook his helmeted head. “What you’re saying is impossible. No one can travel through time.”

            Just as he addressed this fact, the TARDIS lurched in correspondence with the lurching of the Crest. It drew the Mandalorian, the child, and the Time Lords out of the blue box, back into the cargo hold, and into the cockpit. Through the cockpit window, they saw that the Crest was being hauled via tractor beam towards a battleship.

            Djarin couldn’t believe his own eyes when he analyzed the make of the battleship. “That’s a Trade Federation ship,” he indicated. “But one hasn’t been in operation in over thirty years!”

            “Still believe no one can travel through time?” Gen spitefully asked him.