//------------------------------// // A Sound of Thunder... // Story: Luna's Return Trajectory // by Stainless Steel Fox //------------------------------// Long Tieng, Plain of Jars - 16th Febuary 1970 "Another strong point has been discovered, abandoned." The messenger showed days of hard travel on by his face and the state of his clothes, but his expression was joyful. "Phou Nok Kok is clear of PAVN and Pathet Lao forces, and Colonel Phonasa has retaken Objective Tan, overlooking Route 72. The engineering work there has been abandoned." He placed a satchel full of papers, mostly photos, on General Vang Pao's desk. The general opened the satchel and started looking through the photos. "It has to be some sort of trick, to draw our forces out of our defensive positions, this is insane!" Up until a week ago, things had looked bleak for the Laotian Royalist irregulars he commanded. His Kou Kiet operation had gained him the strategic Plain of Jars, but in the months following, his force of less than 6000 men had faced a renewed offensive by 3 times that number of soldiers, People's Army of Vietnam and Laotian communist rebels, the Pathet Lao. The PAVN forces were regular troops, 16 battalions of combined arms with engineering support and 60 tanks. Only the air superiority and additional weapons afforded by clandestine American support through the CIA had allowed his outnumbered and outgunned men to stem the advance, and in recent weeks, the bad weather had mostly negated that advantage. The strategic mountain of Phou Nok Kok had been taken, and route 72 and 7 lost to PAVN forces. They had been poised for a final push up Route 71 and 7 to smash his key defences at the intersection, which would open the way for them to spill out into the Plain of Jars, and despite his efforts to set up spoiling attacks, it looked like nothing could stop them. But over the last week, rather than pushing their advantage, the PAVN forces had simply held their ground. Intelligence reports even suggested preparations for a withdrawl as far as Dien Bien Phu. He'd been sceptical, believing it to be misinformation, to abandon their hard won gains so close to victory made no sense. "Maybe not," One of his CIA 'military advisors', Will Green, said, "The backbone of Campaign 139 has always been the PAVN regulars..." "Pah! without them, the Pathet Lao would never have emerged from their mud holes!" Vang growled. "... we've received word that there have been high level talks with the Chinese Government, very high level talks, to pressure the DRV into de-escalating combat operations. Without that logistical support, continuing their offensive would be reckless." "What could your people offer the Chinese to get..." Vang mused, and his eyes widened in realisation. "The moon horse! She has something they want, and your people have promised it to them!" "I'm not aware of the details, just that a deal is in the works." Green replied. The Hmong general continued reading the reports, such as they were that came with the papers. Unless his forward units had been subverted wholesale by the PAVN, it looked as if this was the real thing. "I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, as your people would say, even one on the moon. We can consolidate, reinforce, maybe even get some proper support up here." Vang noticed the messenger was still stood there. "You're dismissed, get some rest." He decided that after he'd worked through this intelligence, and sent out new orders based on it, he'd take a rest himself. And possibly stop off at a shrine and make an offering to the moon horse in thanks, and to the spirit of the moon so as not to leave her out. He liked his ears attached to his head after all. 'Luna in the Sky with Astronauts' - Beatles release new single In a surprise announcement, the world famous musical group, The Beatles, will be releasing a single in addition to their widely anticipated 12th album, 'Let it Be'. The song is a reworking of the classic song, 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The song is stated to be a homage to Luna, the alien pony stranded on the moon, and has brand new lyrics as well as a revised musical arrangement to reflect it's new, space-inspired theme. John Lennon, the co-songwriter, with Paul McCartney, for the original, was quoted as saying, "We've never really thought about space as a subject for our music before, but the idea of this magical alien pony on the moon, and the pictures they released showing where she came from, it inspired me. It's as fantastic as anything we ever sang about, whereas space is so hard edged and mechanical, the idea of the two meeting was enough for me to sit down with Paul and come up with some new lyrics. "I'd love to meet her when they finally bring her down to Earth, and hear more about Equestria. Imagine, a place where many different kinds of being live together in peace and harmony, no more wars or arguing about religion. It's something I'd like to imagine Luna could teach us. You may think that I'm just dreaming, but it isn't hard to do." He refused to be drawn on the rumours of a spilt in the group, and the announcement of Paul McCartney's solo album of the same name, saying only that, "All of us are growing, finding our own voices. We all still have a lot of music to make." The B side has an extended, purely instrumental version of the new musical arrangement. Top Pops and Music Now -14 March 1970 Johnson Space Centre, Temporary Medical Test Annex - 22 March 1970 Sergeant Willard Johansen, USMC, awoke quite suddenly, not unusal for a marine, especially one recently returned from active duty in Vietnam. The antiseptic smell and mat-like mattress underneath him made him think hospital before he even opened his eyes. When he did, he saw a nurse and doctor standing over him, on opposite sides of the bed. The nurse was putting away some sort of headband in a case on a side table. Definitely a hospital, and a private room, no less. He was also hooked up to a couple of machines on stands that were doing... something, and was aware of pads on his skin, so he gusessed it was some sort of monitoring set-up. He hoped the marines were picking up the bill for this. "How do you feel, Sergeant?" The doctor, his name badge read 'Doctor Wilberforce', asked. How did he feel? Pretty good actually, he shifted in bed, levering himself up slightly and then realised, "I can feel my legs again!" He moved and flexed them, just to be sure. Ever since the accident (and wasn't that a kick in the pants, making it through a tour of duty in that hellhole with nothing worse than sun burn and mosquito bites, only to get crippled when he was supposedly safe back in the World) he'd been unable to feel anything below his waist. The medics on site had saved him from dying, but they hadn't been able to save his spine. "That's as expected. Would you like some water?" The doctor said. At his nod, the nurse raised the head end of his bed and gave him a glass with a straw in. He drank carefully, while he was thirsty, he didn't have the parched throat he'd had when they put him under for the initial surgery. "Shows what that so-called quack knew! He claimed I'd be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life." After he'd woken up from that first surgery, there'd been a whole dance of people telling him how he needed to start adjusting, that despite the surgeons' best efforts, his legs would be useless. Then along has come a guy in a suit, a spook type he'd thought, or some damned lawyer covering the hospital's ass. But it had been an offer to take part in some medical trials of a new medical technique that might be able to restore his spine. He'd decided he didn't have anything to lose, and signed up. Cue him being whisked away by airplane to Texas. "Under other circumstances they'd have been correct. You had near total nerve mortality in your lower spine, multiple shattered vertebrae, ruptured disks. Fortunately, we got to you in time, the technique we used was designed to repair recent trauma, if you'd been allowed to heal naturally for too long, it might not have worked. As it was we were at the upper end of the time limit. The X-rays show complete regeneration, you should have full function." "I'm glad it did." He noticed something else, or rather a lack of something else, which had been overshadowed by the massive shock of having working legs again. Being slammed into a wall by an out of control truck had left plenty of aches and pains on the parts of his body he could feel. "In fact, it feels like it fixed everything!" "That tracks with our current analysis." Dr Wilberforce replied, making notes on a clipboard. "Are you feeling any side effects, dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, headache?" "Uh huh, I feel like I could jump out of bed and do PFT right now." Johansen exclaimed, then realised a certain pressure. "Though right now I need to run to the head!" Unfortunately, even though he felt ready to get up, they wouldn't let him until he'd had a full examination. One mildly annoying session with a bedpan later, and they were ready to continue. He was checked out from head to toe, which only confirmed that he was fully fit and healed, though old scars, such as the one on his left arm he'd got from playing high school football, were still there. He was told he'd have to take it easy for the first couple of days, simply because he'd spent the last 72 hours in bed. He was curious, though, and as they went on it was clear from the way some of the other people who came in acted that Wilberforce had some juice. "So doc, what exactly was this technique, and who's paying for it?" Wilberforce looked surprised, and slightly annoyed. "That should have been covered in the papers you signed, and explained to you before you got here. But rest assured, NASA and the NIH are splitting the bill on this one." Johansen grimaced, "I'll level with you, I was kind of stuck in my own head for most of that. Thinking I'd never walk again, or even go to the bathroom without help... Not in a good place. To be honest, I'd have probably signed those papers if the guy in the suit had been red, with horns and a barbed tail. But NASA? So this is some sort of fancy new space medicine?" "You could call it that." Wilberforce chuckled. "You're aware of the alien, Luna, that Apollo 11 found on the moon?" "I may have been stuck in some goddamn South East Asian armpit, but I wasn't that out of touch. Though some of the squad were calling it fake." "Oh no, she's very real. I've spoken to her a number of times myself. And she has some remarkable abilities in a field we're calling 'thaumics'. More importantly, she's found ways to show us how to replicate some of those abilities. One was an effect used for battlefield healing, or rapidly regenerating traumatic damage, without surgical intervention. "It works by repairing, restoring the body's structure to what it was before the injury, as far as we can tell. While it works in part on leveraging and supercharging the body's own healing processes, it uses the body's past 'pattern' to guide the healing, allowing it to heal things, like nerve damage, that normally couldn't be healed naturally. That's why the time limit, after a certain amount of natural healing the 'pattern' is over-written by the new state. But used in time, it can restore even normally un-healable injuries." "Like my spine." Johansen stated. "Indeed. You're part of the first wave of human testing on that and a couple of related thaumic medical devices." "That headband?" "That's one of them, it can be set to negate all pain sensations throughout the body, induce a deep sleep state, or both. Pain relief and general anesthesia without drugs or the side effects that come with them. While the healing system has built-in pain negation and asepsis, this unit is far simpler, and could be used as a stop gap, or even carried as a first aid tool." Johansen thought back to some of his experiences on active duty. While there had been drug use among the servicemen there which had nothing to do with medicine, he'd known a couple of good soldiers who'd been seriously injured and ended up addicted to the morphine commonly used for pain relief, turning to other drugs when they could no longer get it. He could definitely see the uses for that gadget, not to mention dreamless sleep. He'd used marijuana a time or two himself when the nightmares came... "I hope you can get those things tested and out there, doc, I remember more than a few places where they could have made a big difference." "That's the idea, and why we're working to such an agressive schedule." Wilberforce replied. "The number of lives they could save or make better are literally incalculable! Fortunately the President himself is supporting us, and he's pushed the Department of Health and National Institute of Health to help us fast track testing, and lock down these technologies as safe for general release as soon as possible." Wilberforce didn't say anything about the battle that had happened behind the scenes, to get the testing on track. 'It's just as well we managed to get them classified as surgical and operative procedures rather than medicines, especially the sleep and pain relief effects. If the FDA had gotten a hold of testing, we might see them released for general use some time in the next century.' He shook off his momentary brown study and continued. "Anyway, you don't need to worry about that. Your only duty for the next couple of days is to relax and ogle pretty nurses while we monitor you for any after effects. not that we expect any, these things have been used safely on Luna's home world for centuries." Johansen grinned. "I'm on deck for that, doc, and thanks for fixing me up." Wilberforce nodded. "No thanks necessary, By doing this you'll help many others. But appreciated anyway." He left the sergeant sitting up, and checking out the menu for dinner. There was a long way to go, but the pay-off was well worth it. (Note: USMC - United States Marine Corps; PFT - Physical Fitness Test )