Read Online The Folded World by Jeff Mariotte - Free Book Online Page B

didn’t seem to remember anything about what had happened, didn’t remember the murders, her father, anything. That night was a complete blank for her. As far as I can find out, she’s never been told. The records were sealed because she was so young. She was adopted soon after, by the Tikolo family, and they never even told her they weren’t her biological parents.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.”
    â€œIt’s a sensitive issue. Especially combined with early childhood trauma, although there’s no indication that they even knew precisely what she had been through. Anyway, she didn’t appear to suffer any long-term effects from it, and it never made it into her Starfleet files, nor was it referenced in her psych evals. I put it together from press accounts and court records.”
    â€œYou said they’re sealed.”
    â€œAny seal can be broken,” Chapel said with a smile. “You just have to have the right keys. I know this guy . . .”
    â€œYou don’t have to say any more,” Aimenthe said. “I get it.”
    â€œHe’s just a friend. Point is, Miranda Tikolo has suffered far more psychological damage than she even knows about. She thinks she’s okay with what happened to her off Outpost 4, and maybe she is. Then again—”
    â€œMaybe she’s not.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œYou should try to get word to Doctor McCoy, if you can do it discreetly.”
    â€œI will. In the meantime, I guess we just have to hope that she doesn’t suffer any more trauma. Poor thing’s had more than enough for one lifetime.”
    â€¢   •   •
    â€œYou know, Jim,” McCoy said quietly as he settled into his shuttle seat. “If we do find survivors over there—”
    â€œWe’ll have to figure out how to get them back to the Enterprise, on these shuttles,” Kirk finished for him. “I know, Bones. I don’t know what the answer is. I’m hoping that we’ll learn enough about the anomaly by going into it to come up with the solution.”
    The problem had been nagging at him ever since they’d come up with the idea of pushing shuttles in from outside. Even that plan was questionable at best, since there was no way to know what would happen to the shuttles once they entered the fold.
    As a test, they had removed the explosive combination of matter and antimatter from a photon torpedo and launched it into the fold, and it seemed to follow its ordinary trajectory with only a few minor wobbles. The ship’s instruments had lost track of it once it entered the fold, though, and the bridge crew had lost visual contact, regained it, then lost it again, for good. Spock had pointed out that without any passengers on board, there was no way to know what a sentient being would have experienced as the torpedo journeyed on what appeared to be a fairly straight course into the anomaly. Moving a physical object through space was one thing—moving through warped dimensions, possibly other realities, was something entirely different.
    They were venturing into the unknown in a way that hadn’t been done since Zefram Cochrane took his first warp flight, on the fifth of April in 2063. That flight had brought Earth to the attention of theVulcans and the larger community of the galaxy. Who knew where this one might lead?
    Outside, the hangar deck had been depressurized, and the shuttles started to move. Kirk sat back, still impressed, even after all his experience, with the sensation of motion as the little craft launched into space. It was much more pronounced than he felt inside the Enterprise, even at warp speeds. And space looked very, very big from inside a tiny shuttle.
    Within a short while, they were clear of the Enterprise and could glimpse it diminishing in size behind them. The second shuttle was a bright spot between them and the ship. The vessels locked in the center of the fold