Stranded in a Lost World

by Fedora

Bony Skull

Lyra and the Doctor neared the corridor where they had awoken just after the ship had crashed on Earth; the same corridor that had been struck by a torpedo during the space battle with pirates. The blast doors had shifted aside to reveal a scorched hallway and a torn-open hull. Parts of the jungle were exposed, including tree branches that threatened to join them inside the ship.

“This is the Doctor, Lyra and I are through,” he said over the intercom, “Have you reached the engineer yet?” The line crackled for a moment, and then another voice spoke. Cortland’s tinny yell made the Doctor recoil in surprise.

“You bet your wooden outhouse I’m up,” she said, “and while I’m at it, let me just say that this place is trashed down here. The gemstones are worthless now- just a hunk of melted garbage. The ship’s got a smashed hull all over the place, and without those gemstones we can’t even fly, say nothing about keeping this wreck from comin’ apart at the seams!”

“We’ll clear that hurdle when we come to it,” the Captains voice replied, “Doctor, are you still there?”

“Yeah, I’m about to leave.”

“Clover indicates that there are several life form readings in your vicinity, be advised. Non-equine by the looks of them,” the Captain said.

“Fantastic,” grumbled the Doctor.

****

Derpy looked over the form of the ship’s first officer as he began to come to, and his expression quickly shifted from one of consternation. He sat himself up, glancing around angrily.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded, “What’s she doing out of the brig?!”

“Commander Moonshine,” Brimstone said, “I think we owe these ponies an apology for stashing them in the brig. As it is, we’re stuck back in time. Cortland’s assessing the situation with Lt. Cinder and determining what needs repair, the Captain and Clover are both talking to the Doctor via intercom, and Derpy and I are tending to you.”

“B-back in time?”

“Please just try to breathe, and remain cam,” Derpy advised, “We’ll explain later.”

****

Lyra and the Doctor slowly trotted down a darker corridor. Somehow the damage must’ve knocked out the lighting circuitry, as the only lights came from the occasional space porthole and partially-working panels. The two made their way to a sign that read “to hangar” with an arrow pointing right down a branched hall. The TARDIS was somewhere to the left according to the Doctor.

They stopped. Lyra heard a noise down the corridor they were to traverse, and the Doctor could make out darkish forms moving about in the shadows.

“What is it?” whispered Lyra, “is it a dinosaur?”

“Probably,” the Doctor replied. He withdrew the sonic screwdriver, and held the tip up to spread light into the corridor and allow them to see clearly.

As soon as he turned the device on, a terrified shriek erupted from the startled creature within. For only seconds he and Lyra caught a glimpse of a blueish gray biped dinosaur with a thick bony forehead. The creature was about as tall standing on it’s hind legs as either pony. It howled at them again, and bowed its head.

“Lyra, that thing’s gonna charge us,” the Doctor cried, “Run!”

The Doctor and Lyra galloped down the adjacent hall, pursued by the dinosaur. It had it's head lowered, bony plate trained on Lyra's hindquarters. The Doctor and Lyra were losing hallway to run down, and had to skid around a sharp corner to avoid crashing into a panel. They took off running down the next corridor, and the dinosaur smashed his head into the panel. He had narrowly missed Lyra, and fell onto the floor.

The creature came to his senses, picked himself up off the ground, and snorted at the retreating ponies. Lyra and the Doctor were far enough away by now for it to disengage the chase, and it returned to the hallway it previously occupied. The Doctor and Lyra watched from a safe distance, catching their breaths.

"I'm.... I'm glad he wasn't too..... hungry," Lyra gasped between breaths. The Doctor seemed confused.

"Hungry?" he said, "No... that was a plant eater Lyra. Pachycephalosaurus, if my history is correct."

"If it didn't want to eat us," reasoned Lyra, "then it wouldn't have tried chasing us down, right?"

"No," replied the Doctor, "We probably just startled him, and it tried headbutting you in self defense. Fantastic little dinosaur though, it's skull is like a built-in battering ram."

"Real, living dinosaurs," Lyra said to herself, "if only the club could see this now. If I told any of them when I got back what I've seen they'd never believe me, you know. Most ponies think time travel is totally impossible."

"Good," the Doctor said, "I'm not too fond of amateur time travelers myself, they've got no idea what they're doing."

"What about Derpy and me?"

"That's different," he said, "You're my assistants, and I'm an expert in temporal science. Say, you know what I just noticed: this corridor branches off to the same platform where I left the TARDIS. This is fantastic!"

"Better than getting headbutted by a big lizard."

****

"Doctor, can you hear me?" Derpy said over the intercom. With Moonshine the ship's first officer up and alert, she had joined the Captain and the science officer in listening in on the Doctor's progress.

"Yeah," a voice came through, "Just had a bit of a run-in with a dino down here- they've started crawling in through that hull breach. It went right after Lyra, but she's unhurt. We're lucky it was a plant eater this time."

"Where are you now?" the Captain interjected, "We're showing you just above a ladder system that goes down to the deck containing this TARDIS of yours."

"Yeah," he replied, "I was gonna go down first and have Lyra follow above me. There's not anything nasty waiting for me down there, right? Girl with the scanner?"

Clover frowned. She was receiving a very large patch of static on her intra-ship scanner right where the Doctor's TARDIS was supposed to be. It made lifeform, hull integrity, and hazardous material scans impossible.

"I can't see anything," she admitted, "Maybe your ship's making interference to block my signal."

The Doctor was silent for a moment.

"I'm going down now," he said, "I'll make radio contact once we've both reached the lower deck."

The Doctor's signal faded out, and as they waited to hear from him the side doors to the bridge whooshed open. A reddish coated mare stepped out, and was not dressed in her standard uniform unlike the other ship officers. This was the ship's engineer, Commander Cortland.

"I've checked over just about everything I can down there," she reported to Starstruck and Moonshine, "The place is a total mess all over. You're gonna have a hard time flying her anywhere without gemstones, and I doubt she's got enough left in her to make it to space. Gimme a day and a half and I can patch up hull damage and some other stuff to make her safe to take into the vacuum, but you've got to come up with a way of getting new gemstones."

Starstruck sighed, and buried her hooves in her face. Noticing his superior officer’s frustration, Moonshine stepped in to respond to the engineer.

“Thank you, Commander,” he said, “We’ll have to come up with a strategy to find more gemstones. In the meantime, have you checked on the status of the life support systems and food reconstitution?”

“Both down at the moment,” Cortland replied, “The life support system’s one of the first things on my list, actually. We’re lucky we’re on Earth- if we were in this state but in space we’d be deader than a dogbone. The food stuff is down, and I’d have to get supplies from the space station to fix that, unfortunately.”

“We’ll have to find food here,” Moonshine said, “We’re going to need two scouting parties, one to find gemstone deposits and another to gather food. If what the Doctor says is true and his ship can travel in space and time, neither task should be incredibly difficult.”

“Yes,” the Captain agreed, seating herself in the Captain’s chair, “He could just go forward to our time, get a spare gemstone core, and bring it back in time to us.”

The radio crackled, and the Doctor’s voice came through.

“It’s not going to be that easy,” he said.

“Doctor!” Derpy responded, “Where are you now, what’s down there?”

“Well, I’ve discovered a second hull breach,” he said, “And it looks like part of the Poet is stuck in the water. I’d wager we crashed on the edge of a deep lake, as this smells like fresh water. This end of the ship is dipping into the lake a bit, and your end is all the way up on the edge of the forest.”

“Good to know,” Starstruck said, “What about your spaceship?”

“Well,” the Doctor’s voice admitted, “There’s where we have a bit of a problem. The hull breach down here is pretty large, and since I can’t seem to find the TARDIS right where it’s supposed to be I’m assuming it fell out at some point, either before we crashed or during the crash itself.”

“So it’s at the bottom of a lake?” Derpy asked.

“That’s my guess. I’m on my way back up there now.”

Comments

[jimerjam]

oh shit