Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [149]
Kyle grabbed for Bonner’s wrist, but the man was strong in spite of his insanity-or maybe because of it, Kyle thought. He took a couple of hard blows to the head as he wrestled Bonner in the dark. He wasn’t sure how many more of those he’d be able to shrug off. He needed to take Bonner down, fast.
The lights came back on. “See here, Bonner,” Kyle heard Admiral Paris saying once he could see what was happening. Bonner ignored him, and Kyle tried to ignore everything. Bonner’s madness had indeed given him strength-or else he was right, and there were two people in him, each contributing his own strength. In spite of Kyle’s best efforts, Bonner had managed to angle his wrist so that his phaser was pointed directly at Kyle’s head.
“We’d like to see your precious strategy get you out of this,” Bonner snarled. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Kyle released Bonner’s wrist suddenly. Since Bonner had been fighting against the pressure Kyle had been putting on it, the sudden action made his arm drop precipitously. Kyle sidestepped the phaser blast, which tore a hole in the floor, and moved in with a left jab at Bonner’s middle. The left was a feint. When Bonner moved to block it, Kyle instead threw a right that connected hard with Bonner’s chin. Kyle thought he might have broken a knuckle, but he didn’t care. Bonner’s head snapped back, blood already trailing from his mouth, and slammed into the wall behind him. Kyle followed up with another left, a real one this time, but Bonner was already sliding down the wall, unconscious. Kyle caught his wrist and worked the phaser from his hand, then let the vice admiral fall to the floor.
“Sometimes, Vice Admiral Bonner,” he said in reply to the man’s final statement, “all the strategy in the world isn’t worth as much as a good right hook.”
“Is he insane, do you think, Kyle?” Owen Paris asked him later. “Even with all of our science, all our knowledge, there’s so much we don’t know about the human mind. We can’t build ships that can go in and explore it like we do outer space. We’re only guessing at so much of it. Is it possible that Heidl really is, somehow, in there with Bonner?”
They were in Owen’s office. They had eaten some lunch, and Kyle felt better, more relaxed and contented, than he had in a very long while. He took a sip of excellent coffee. “I’ll leave it to people smarter than me to figure that out,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s just nuts. He had to listen to his stepson die. The Berlin came to drop off the team that was to investigate Heidl’s experiments, then it left. Bonner was on that ship, keeping it just far enough away to not be able to help when the Tholians came, but trying to keep it close enough that Heidl could escape to it. Heidl went back, as Bonner said, but then the attack came and no one could beam off the starbase anymore. He tried to launch a shuttle-our records prove that someone tried to-but he couldn’t do that either. He was trapped on the starbase, and Bonner was stuck listening to him die. Then he couldn’t tear himself away from listening to the rest of the invasion either. It must have been then that he went insane, or started to.”
Owen steepled his hands and tapped his fingertips against his mouth. “You’re probably right,” he said. “At least, that story fits the facts that we know. The other facts-what Heidl and his friends were working on, why Bonner went on that trip and why he couldn’t save Heidl-we’ll just have to speculate on. Or take Bonner’s word for.”
“I’m not sure I’d do that,” Kyle suggested. “Bonner’s word probably isn’t good for much.”
“What amazes me,” Owen said, “is how long he was able to function here. We’ll go through his records thoroughly, and maybe we’ll find that he wasn’t really functioning all that well. But he seemed to be. He passed. Except that he