Free The Pirates of Sufiro (Book 1) (Old Star New Earth) by David Lee Summers Page A

long hours of labor. The meter of the words helped give rhythm to Suki's breathing. Roberts worked the medical scanner and stood by, waiting for the baby to show herself. The captain looked into Suki's face and saw the pain that was there. Her face was red; sweat streamed from virtually every pore. Firebrandt would wipe her face with a cool cloth. Roberts brought ice for her to chew. As each pain hit, she groaned at the captain and shuddered. After a long night, Suki grabbed a handful of Firebrandt's long, red hair and they yelled together as she pushed. He looked into her face to avoid seeing the blood at the other end of the table. He would reflect later how strange that was since he had no trouble with blood during battle. Certainly this experience had felt like battle. Yet blood from his own beloved was too painful to look at.
    Finally the baby cried and Firebrandt forced himself to look. "It's a girl," Roberts announced. Of course they had known it was a girl, but Roberts insisted on making the ageold announcement. He took her gently and cleaned her, wrapping her in linen from the crew bunks. Firebrandt sat down, his chest hurting. He looked down and saw that Suki had pulled out a large clump of chest hair.
    Roberts brought the little girl to her parents. Suki held her. Firebrandt dabbed some of the sweat off Suki's brow. "So," said Roberts. "What's her name?"
    Firebrandt and Suki looked at each other. "She's a little bit of each of us," she said.
"Suki Firebrandt?" suggested the captain.
"Suki Carter Firebrandt," corrected Suki.
"That's an awfully big name for someone so small." A broad smile lit up Roberts' face.
As if in response, the baby let out a blood-curdling yell. "My," exclaimed Suki, shaken from her exhausted euphoria. "What a fiery temperament."
"Her name may be Suki Carter Firebrandt, but I think we'll call her Fire." The captain stroked his moustache as he stared transfixed at his baby girl.
The snow fell outside the homestead. Sufiro slept. Inside, Roberts, Firebrandt, and Suki slept, periodically awakened by cries from a fiery small one, demanding attention. * * * *
    Spring came and the baby grew. Suki breastfed the baby. Again, the homesteaders reveled in the sunshine of lazy, warm days, donning clothes only to protect themselves when working in the fields or picking fruit. While Suki tended the baby's needs, Firebrandt would spend hours going over his notes and working on detailed maps of Nova Granada. Roberts noticed that life on Sufiro had caused the captain to become tanned and muscled like he never had been before. Work in the slightly high gravity had done it. Spaceship crews tended to be pale and thin. That was the way of things in artificial light. Even warriors spent most of their time operating a computer.
    Firebrandt was amazed at how quickly Suki regained her form after pregnancy. Like Firebrandt, she was tanned; her breasts firm and well gummed. Suki had found new strength after becoming a mother. Firebrandt may be captain, but she was mother and protector of the child. It was a mentality with which the captain was unfamiliar, but he accepted it. Actually he loved her all the more now that Suki was more sure of herself than before.
    Firebrandt was no longer bored. He was happy to be alive. Even Roberts seemed more animated than he had been. Suki spent most of her nights sharing the captain's bed. Though, there were nights that she left the baby in his capable hands and spent the night with Roberts, who seemed freed of ancient demons. Good things seemed to be in the air.
    As the summer progressed, Fire began to crawl. She found insects in the grass and examined them, sometimes putting them in her mouth. Suki came along and told her to put them down. Often she had to gently coax the bug out of the little girl's hand. One afternoon, Fire caught an insect no one had ever seen before. It was long with a spine protruding from its back. When the little girl refused to put it down, her mother reached