I awoke to sunlight shining through the window onto my face, making me squint and turn my head. Big mistake, as the muscles in my neck protested and causing me to grunt in pain. At this moment, I'd be hard pressed to find some part of me that wasn't in pain.
"Oh, my. You're awake!" A pleasant sounding voice from across the room. Biting through the pain, I turned to face the other being in the room and was greeted by a winged horse with a brilliant pink mane and a light grayish golden coat. "I'll go get Nurse Redheart," the female voice said, with both concern and a tiny bit of fear in her voice.
"No, wait," I managed to say, the motions of my jaw making head throb. The, I can't believe I'm seeing this, pegasus stopped mid-flight out the door. "Where am I?"
"Oh..." she squeaked, her cyan eyes darting back and forth as if she was looking for a way out. "You're in the Hospital in Ponyville. We brought you here after the girls found you. You passed out." She said quietly, barely audible, and very quickly. "I'llgogetNurseRedheart." she said after a short pause and flew out the door.
Now alone in the room, I looked down to see that I wasn't in my uniform, and I had a sling on my left arm. Raising my eyebrows at seeing this, it felt like something had been wrapped around my head, and sure enough, feeling my forehead with my hand, I had a gauze bandage wrapped around my head, with a large pad over my left temple. It felt dry and crusty, most likely partially soaked through with blood that had since dried. Thats right, I had a concussion. I remembered vaguely, thinking of the tricorder scan I did on myself after I woken up in the shuttle.
"Very good, you're awake." A polite male stallion wearing a white doctor's lab coat said. "I wasn't sure how you'd react to the treatments we gave you since we've never encountered your species before. Thankfully your physiology not all the dissimilar to minotaurs, with some obvious differences." The horse doctor told me. Did he say Minotaurs?! "I'm Doctor Horses," Oh, this is too much I thought, smiling to myself. "I'm your attending physician. You seemed have had a rough go of it last night. We treated you for a concussion, a dislocated shoulder and some bruised ribs. I'm most concerned about the concussion, so I'm going to insist that you stay here another night for observation." He told me, holding a clipboard in his... Hoof? How the hell? "I'd like to ask you some questions if that's alright." I nodded yes.
"Whats your name?"
"Lieutenant James Scott." I told him, and he jotted it down.
"Military, huh? And what species are you?"
"I'm human."
"This is the point where I ask you what year it is, and where you think you are to gauge if your concussion has caused any complications, but since you're obviously not from around here, I guess we'll just have to wait and see."
"Well, aside from a headache and being sore all over, I don't feel any worse than I look," I told him coherently, getting a pleased smile from the doctor, affirming to me that he had a hunch I was going to be fine, so I decided to set him even more at ease. "There was a rectangular device with me, it has to be in the room with me since that's what's allowing us to communicate, where is it?"
"I think the nurse put your belongings in your side table," Dr Horses said, trotting over to the table and pulling the tricorder out of the drawer and handed it to me. I opened it up and showed it to him.
"This is an emergency medical tricorder. It's a diagnostic device designed to help those without medical training treat injured people." I told him while activating its diagnostic program and scanned my head. The lack of any alarms, as well as the readout confirmed that my concussion was well on its way to healing.
"I can't read what it says." the doctor said.
"Can I see your clipboard?" I asked, and he tentatively passed it to me. I activated the tricorder's universal translator subroutines and scanned the contents of the page. After a minute of processing it began translating the medical readout in the language these horses use.
"By Celestia, this is amazing. Your concussion is almost healed!"
"So, is he well Doctor?" A voice from the door asked, startling both of us.
"Yes he is, all things considered." He said, greeting the new horse at the door. "Lieutenant Scott, this is Mayor Mare," What is with this world and puns?
"Lieutenant?" She said with some trepidation in her voice.
"Ahem," another voice said, causing the Mayor to step aside to reveal a... Unicorn?! With wings?
"Hello, I'm Twilight Sparkle,"
"Princess," Mayor Mare corrected, causing the unicorn to roll her eyes in annoyance.
"Well, it's a pleasure to meet both of you. Allow me to formally introduce myself." I responded. "I'm Lieutenant James Scott of the Federation Starship Juno Beach, I'm a member of Starfleet and I represent the United Federation of Planets."
"And ponies thought my name was a hoofful..." The mayor remarked, getting a sideways glance from Twilight.
"The words you used... You mentioned Planets, Ships? Where are you from?" Twilight asked with a serious inquisitive glint in her eyes. She's like my sister when she wants to know something.
"I'm not from this world," I told the Princess flatly. "My species comes from a place very far from here called Earth in a solar system called Sol."
"You're from Space?!" The winged unicorn gasped in total shock. "But that's impossible! Traveling to the stars is the stuff of science fiction!"
"Why would I lie about that?"
"Good point." She conceded.
"Ordinarily we wouldn't be having this conversation," I told her, causing her ears to flip up. "My society has a strict non-interference policy when it comes to contacting races who have not yet attained interstellar travel so as to not interfere with the natural development of their culture. We call it the Prime Directive and is Starfleet's general order one."
"Then what brought you here?" Mayor Mare asked me.
"To be honest, I don't know. My shuttle was struck by something and was sent off course towards a bad ion storm,"
"Ion Storm?" Twilight asked
"A spatial phenomenon that's comprised of extremely high radioactive energy that can heat substances to the point of ionizing it at the atomic level." I explained in layman's terms, and to my surprise, Twilight seemed to understand what I was talking about.
"Sounds dangerous."
"Very. The next thing I knew the shuttle was out of control and my only option was to land on your world. Well, crash would be the appropriate term..." I said, scratching the back of my head.
"It would seem that your concerns were unfounded Mayor, I think we can send the guards home now." Twilight said, addressing the older horse.
"Very prudent." I remarked. "I would have had me under guard too if the situation was reversed." I continued, getting a nod from the mayor who then left the room.
"So, Lieutenant," Twilight said.
"James is fine."
"James, is there anything we can do to help you? You must be wanting to get home."
"I'd be grateful for whatever help I can get, but I won't know what I need till I get back to my shuttle. I need to see if I can fix its communication device to see if I can contact my people."
"Well, for now I think we should listen to Dr. Horses and rest; then we can both see what we can do about getting you home tomorrow."
The next thing I knew, three small ponies dashed into the room and started bombarding me with questions.
"I'm sorry Twilight, I couldn't keep them away any longer, they wanted to see our... guest." The same pink haired pegasus said, talking over the three youths, who I still couldn't understand as they were clamoring to talk over one another.
"Its no problem, Fluttershy." Twilight said, addressing the pegasus. Guess that explains her behavior. "Girls." Twilight said, trying to get their attention, to no avail. "Girls!" Not enough. "GIRLS!" She yelled, this time grabbing their undivided attention. There was something odd about her voice when she yelled. It sounded like something artificial had amplified it. "Girls, thank you. Now, one at a time."
And again, I was assaulted by three fillies tossing questions my way simultaneously, causing the older horses to do their equivalent of a facepalm.