Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

without being prompted? But she knew the answer to that.
    Six was the third lieutenant colonel, who looked entirely conventional and who had participated in three sieges. Cheris reminded herself that she might be overmatched, but they were probably in the bidding for the same reason that she was, which meant they weren’t any better at staying out of trouble with Doctrine.
    “I don’t suppose,” Cheris said to the servitor, “you know what resources I am allowed to include in my proposal?” It was tempting, but stereotypically Kel, to suggest dropping all available bombs on the Fortress and seeing if they knocked out the shields. Not that Kel stereotypes ever stopped a Kel.
    The servitor surprised her by speaking, albeit in flashes of light in the Kel drum code. “Any plan you can induce Kel Command to accept is permitted,” it said: not quite a tautology.
    “Is there further intelligence on the Entangled March?”
    The servitor was silent. Need-to-know, probably.
    It had been worth a try. “Has the meeting been scheduled yet?” Cheris asked.
    “Approximately three hours,” the servitor said.
    “ Approximately ?” Cheris said incredulously.
    The servitor shrugged.
    “All right,” she said. “Is there anything else?”
    Another shrug.
    Cheris rolled up the gamecloth and chained it shut again, but when she turned to offer it to the servitor, it had gone and the door was closing behind it.
    Approximately three hours, which would still be earlier than she would rather have risen. She should have been researching instead of sleeping, but she had been tired and she had needed the rest.
    Since there was no point in going back to bed, she put the gamecloth on a corner of the desk and frowned at the wall. Any plan you can induce Kel Command to accept is permitted. She had to assume that the others had been told the same thing. It was one thing to know that the might of the Kel was theoretically available to you. It was another thing to devise a plan that had a chance of being accepted. The Kel had six cindermoths, their most powerful warmoths, which could also project calendrical stability. She might propose that they all be sent to the Fortress, and then they’d have a chance, but that would leave the rest of the hexarchate undefended, and no one would take her seriously. Her future depended on being taken seriously. Even if her future meant nothing to her, which wasn’t the case anyway, she was obliged to offer the best plan she could for the hexarchate’s sake.
    Cheris looked down at her hands and forced them to relax. Kel Command would be looking for the fastest, most economical solution. This meant the use of weapons ordinarily forbidden.
    And that meant the Kel Arsenal. Catastrophe guns, abrogation sieves, small shining boxes that held the deaths of worlds. During graduation from Kel Academy Prime, she had seen such a box, disarmed, dented, and ordinary in appearance. The speaker said it had annihilated the populations of three planets. Small planets, but still. It was remarkable how much death could be held in a small box.
    Cheris didn’t have the Arsenal’s inventory and knew better than to ask for it. How many small shining boxes could she request? But the hexarchs didn’t seek a scouring, or they would have done it already. They meant to preserve the Fortress of Scattered Needles under their rule.
    Which details mattered most to Kel Command? If the point was just to bomb the heretics into submission, it became a matter of optimization. Costs, supplies laid in, acceptable deaths.
    She looked at the gamecloth again. The web piece. Poisoning your principles. What were the Shuos trying to tell her?
    “Of course,” she whispered. They were telling her to choose her battlefield. She could expect conventional proposals from a few of the Kel. There was no telling what the Shuos would come up with, but the Rahal could be relied upon to suggest something elegant and cutting.
    If the Fortress of Scattered