Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars by Glynn Stewart

given the exactly right impression of the Ardennes Special Security Service - and then died saving the Hand’s life!
    With all of the assassins dead, there was no way Stealey could link the attack back to Vaughn. She knew , now, how dangerous his rebels were. It shouldn’t take much to swing her completely on side for a forceful, permanent, solution - one with all of the resources of the Protectorate behind her.
    He smoothed his face to an appropriate expression of concern as his secretary paged him. He brought her image up and regarded the young woman - as beautiful as only the finest surgeons could make her, and an extremely pleasant armful in bed - calmly.
    “What is it, Rita?”
    “General Montoya is here to see you, sir.”
    “Send him in, Rita. With everything going on, this is important,” he instructed.
    While he waited for Montoya, Vaughn crossed to a hutch on the wall of his office and pulled out two crystal glasses and a decanter of whiskey. The whiskey was from Scotland on Earth and cost easily several months of the fixed wage a member of the Worker Placement Program received.
    The crystal was from a set made in England in the early Twentieth Century. The decanter and six glasses had cost as much as some of the apartment buildings Vaughn had seen constructed for those same workers.
    “Get in here,” he ordered when Montoya opened the door. The small man looked worried, but then, Montoya always looked worried. “Have a drink!”
    He forced the glass of whiskey into the General’s hand, then clinked glasses with him.
    “ Sante !” he toasted, then took a swallow of the whiskey.
    “It’s still early to celebrate, Governor,” Montoya replied, but only after drinking.
    “We’re not done yet, no,” Vaughn agreed. “But the escapade your men pulled today? And poor, poor, Lieutenant Avison’s heroic death? I think we are well on our way to opening Miss Stealey’s eyes.”
    “Do not underestimate the Hand, Michael,” Montoya said very quietly. His use of Vaughn’s first name stopped the Governor in his tracks - while Vaughn regarded the man as a friend and had tried several times to insist he use his first name, the General almost never did.
    “This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to kill her, nor even the closest anyone has come to succeeding,” Montoya continued. He took a sip of the whiskey, shaking his head. “Hell, in one incident I’ve managed to acquire details of, Alaura Stealey was the direct target of a regimental assault . An assault that left three hundred men protecting her dead - along with every single attacker .”
    “We were counting on the sheer destructive power of an enraged Hand,” Vaughn pointed out. “The weapons and intelligence you provided may have convinced our tame rebels they had a chance, but we knew better.”
    “Yet you still underestimate her,” Montoya replied. “She does not trust you - and she has very capable people.”
    Before Vaughn could ask what the other man meant, Montoya slid a chip into the reader on the Governor’s desk and triggered it. A hologram of Ardennes sprung into existence over the desk, and a highlighted flight path appeared on it.
    “That left her destroyer,” Vaughn quickly realized. “Why wasn’t I advised of this?”
    “It’s a Navy assault shuttle,” Montoya explained. “With twenty Marines aboard, launched the minute that the jammers engaged.
    “You didn’t hear about it because they didn’t file a flight path or even tell us they were coming. They launched without permission, using full stealth systems. My people learned they were coming when the fuckers landed an assault shuttle in the middle of Nouveaux Normandy.”
    “Dammit,” Vaughn exhaled.
    “It’s worse. We backtracked their course through the surveillance satellites and some help from our friend Cor. They flew directly over Karlsberg.”
    “The storm rolled in already,” the Governor objected. “They can’t have seen much.”
    “It depends