Read Online Women of War by Alexander Potter - Free Book Online

involved assassination of rivals by as clever a means as possible.
    Not a group to overlook a stranger.
    â€œWhy?” My favorite question. I stared at Ersh, a mountain of crystal shaped in hardness and edge.
    Her voice could be as warm and soft as any flesh. “Why did I put her at risk? Because Skalet resisted being other than herself. The idea of a different form influencing who she was terrified her. She would be crippled by that fear, useless to our Web, unless forced to live it.”
    â€œWhy the Kraal?” I whispered.
    â€œA act of charity, Youngest.” I must have looked confused, because Ersh clicked her digits together with an impatient ring. “Like Skalet, Kraal do not welcome physical contact, unless in practice drills. Like Skalet, they do not welcome personal questions. They share an obsession with intellect and games. And respect authority.”
    I ignored the last, most likely aimed at me. “What happened?”
    As Ersh winked into the blue teardrop of her Web-form, I realized my curiosity was once more taking me where I’d doubtless regret going.
    Not that fear could stop instinct. I released my hold on this form, cycling into my true self, and formed a mouth for Ersh’s offering of the past.
    Gloves froze and stiffened; coat fabric froze and crinkled. The slight whoof of air that escaped the face mask with each breath added its moisture to the rim of ice searing both cheeks and chin, that flesh rapidly losing all feeling anyway. Another being might have feared the cold, the darkness, and the howl of a wind that ripped unchallenged across this plain of floating ice from an empty ocean six hundred kilometers away.
    Then again, another being wouldn’t have preferred chipping frost from the antenna array, a duty that entailed far more than finding and climbing a ladder in the dark, over company and warmth. But Skalet craved these moments of solitude, no matter how punishing to her Humanself.
    For the Kraal outpost was as close to a hell as any Human legend remembered by the Web. At the southern pole of an uninhabited world known only by a number, those assigned to it faced two seasons: a summer of sharp blinding ice crystals, in air that struggled up to minus twenty degrees Celsius under an unsetting sun; or a winter of utter darkness, where ceaselessly drifting snow erased the tracks of any who dared move outside at temperatures that solidified oil, let alone flesh.
    Not that either season made hiding easier. In the summer, movement could only be concealed within tunnels through the snow, joining each of the domes. In the winter, radiation leaked by suit or building would betray them. For this was an outpost of that deadly kind: a spy set in place for a war that might come their way, at best an expendable asset, at worst, a prized target.
    Skalet, to her surprise and growing dismay, fit in too well.
    The eighteen stationed at the outpost were, to put it plainly, disposable. The arrival of another such was occasion for no more than a shifting of bunk assignments. Skalet’s calm acceptance of a lowermost bed had nothing to do with stoicism, although it impressed the Kraal. Dumping heat was essential for a Web-being forced to hold another form and the temperature at floor level in all the buried domes was close to freezing. A cold bed was thus, as Skalet would say, convenient.
    But her behavior set a pattern. Ersh’s orders and her situation notwithstanding, our reluctant Web-kin wanted as little to do with Kraal as possible. She took the worst shifts. She’d seek out the most dangerous, dirty tasks and do them alone. She’d eat first or last and clean up every trace of her existence. Unfortunately for Skalet, everything she did to avoid the other eighteen at the outpost only served to enhance her reputation. The others admired her fortitude, nicknamed her Icicle, and whispered of rapid promotion. Several went so far as to broach offers of support, gambling,