"Kathy Tyers - Firebird 2 - Fusion Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tyers Kathy)

canard-over-tailfin during the war, but adjusting to pregnancy was the most challenging task of all. Never
in her life had she hoped for children.

She padded on soft slippers to the dining table. A Thyrian dekia, ten days, had passed since her birthday.
Against the long sweep of windows that made the north wall of their home, Brennen sat finishing his
breakfast. Built into the side of Trinn Hill by a retired messenger captain whoтАЩd spent too much time in a
tiny Brumbee courier ship, the houseтАЩs expansive upper story centered on a decorative stairwell that was
half-walled in glass and densely grown with vines, and its northern windowall overlooked Soldane, when
the area was scheduled for sunshine.

As Brennen ate, he eyed a small bluescreen on the tabletop and occasionally jabbed at its keyboard.
Here on Trinn Hill, in the hillands between Soldane city and the forbidding, coastal Dracken Range,
Brennen had invested all his Federate severance pay in the most secure location he could find, then seen
to it that the homeтАЩs sec system was the best available, to protect them both тАФand their children,
soonтАФfrom Shuhr, and other enemies Brennen had collected in ten years of service. All approaches
could be monitored from terminals in every room, and a person indoors could dispatch an intruder at any
entrance.

Firebird glanced over BrennenтАЩs shoulder at the bluescreen. He was using the terminal merely to access
the home database and preview his dayтАЩs work. Cradling her cruinn cup, she sank onto the opposite
chair and gazed out the window. RainтАФstill. The regionтАЩs dry dekia would not begin for another twelve
days. Their home was spacious, though, and she could escape to the coastal Base when she ached to see
the sun. Beyond the security-gridded glasteel kitchen wall, little puddles collected on an ironbark deck
and dripped between slats onto mossy ground below. Watching the rain made her sleepy againтАФshe
took another sip of cruinn тАФbut watching Brennen was far more interesting. Already smartly uniformed,
he stared thoughtfully at the screen, pressed a key, then lifted another bite of smoked fish to his mouth.
The bright blue light of the screen gave his face an odd cast and shone wild and bright in his eyes: an alien
look.

Did he imagine an alien when he looked at her, too? Or just a once-slender, small-featured woman,
whose body now swelled with his sons?

Firebird swirled the cup and slid into memory again. Apprehension had nearly kept her from marrying
him. He had been a Federate officerтАФan intelligence officer, Thyrian and therefore alien in her
homeworldтАЩs viewтАФand she had been taken prisoner. Naetai might one day forgive her for accepting the
ideals of its Federate conquerors, for the Federates had ruled Naetai well and fairly these months, but
marrying a Thyrian Sentinel?

Unthinkable.

She had been warned that marriage with any of Brennen Caldwell.тАЩs kind would mean an intimacy far
beyond the physical, a linking of souls at appalling depth. For days after the wedding,

Brennen had remained the center of her consciousness. Tenderly he cared for her until she emerged from
bonding shock, a separate entity again.

She recovered fully, but remained keenly aware of the change that had taken place: a kind of emotional
stereo programmed permanently into her perception. The pair bonding had proven far different from the
dehumanizing continuous telepathy Firebird had dreaded. The best of it came at night, for he knew
exactly what pleasured herтАж