28
Identity: Patricia Killiam
“What is he doing?”
Bob stopped pacing and looked at me. He didn’t have access to Command and couldn’t see what I saw now. Jimmy stood motionless as critical seconds slipped by. We all watched in disbelief while Kesselring roared at him in panic.
“Bob, I need to go,” I said without further explanation, leaving behind a thin splinter while I snapped my main subjective into Marie’s body at Command.
Everyone there was frozen, all except for Kesselring. He’d crossed the room and was standing in front of Jimmy, holding his shoulders and shaking him. Jimmy didn’t even look like he was there.
I strode over and pulled Kesselring away. The window of opportunity was closing quickly.
“Jimmy!” I yelled. At that moment, his face came back to life, and his eyes flashed as he turned to look at me.
What he said next stunned us even more.
“Power down all weapons immediately!” he ordered. “And shut down the propulsion systems!”
“Belay that!” I yelled, at the same time disabling the technicians’ authorizations.
Reaching into the Command network with my phantoms, I tried to gain control of the systems as he blocked them from me. My mind raced. Somehow, the Terra Novans had gotten to him. We’d given enormous power to Jimmy for this operation, putting all our eggs in one basket.
So this was their plan.
Furiously, my mind splintered into hundreds of shards, shooting them into Jimmy’s command-and-control structures in the multiverse worlds that spread out from Command.
Kesselring tried helping me, but he hadn’t the power in these worlds that I had.
Desperately, I quickened my mind, launching thousands, and then millions, of attacks and feints and counterattacks at his cyber-defenses, projecting millisecond phutures as I tried to find a weakness to exploit.
The milliseconds became seconds, the window to saving Atopia closing.
“Stop this!” I screamed at him.
“Stand down, Patricia, I’m warning you!” he yelled back.
Desperately we grappled with each other, and then.…
Everything went white in a blinding flash of pain.
As my mind reassembled itself and my senses and metasenses slowly reintegrated, the world came back into focus. My ears were ringing, and I was sitting on the floor. Everyone in the room was stunned.
What the hell was that?
Jimmy looked at me calmly.
The point of no return had passed. Atopia was sitting defenseless amid the storms. We would be destroyed.
“Do not touch anything,” said Jimmy finally. “Everything is under control.”