Starship's Mage 2 Hand of Mars by Glynn Stewart Page A

on what sensors they installed on the bird,” Montoya said grimly. “It will take them some time, but if they get any useful data, it could invalidate our whole video footage.”
    “We have to take the risk,” Vaughn told him after a moment’s consideration. “The storm will break up the impact craters, clear away any evidence. It’s nice when this planet’s weather co-operates.”
    Montoya shook his head.
    “You’re right, boss, in that this went about as well as it could,” he concluded. “But we need to remember that Stealey doesn’t trust us as far as she could throw us. Anything we hand her, anything we set up, has to be iron tight.”
    Vaughn finished his whiskey in one gulp, staring at the globe of his planet. He was going to play this bitch like a fiddle, one way or another. But Montoya was right, too. He had to be careful.
    “Your bag-man with the rebels,” he said quietly. “Keep him in Normandy. Assign him some dipshit administrative command, something to keep him out of Stealey’s sight. Make sure anything about your Special Operations Directorate is locked down, too. My seal.”
    Montoya nodded wordlessly, finishing his own whiskey.
    “We need to keep her off balance, guessing,” Vaughn continued. “When the dust settles, I don’t need her to trust me or even like me - I just need her to do what I want.”

    #

    “My understanding,” Lori Armstrong said icily into the conference call connecting her to the other leaders of the Freedom Wing, “was that we were leaving Normandy alone to see if Governor Fok lived up to his potential.”
    “For that matter,” the ex-leader of the Freedom Party and now rebel leader continued, “I recall agreeing to suspend operations entirely after Karlsberg, until we came up with a better strategy.”
    “So who the fuck attacked the Hand ?” she snarled.
    The line, linked to all twenty of her top cell leaders, was silent for a long moment.
    Then someone sighed, and the smooth, well-aged voice of Agent Papa spoke.
    “None of us did, Alpha,” he said softly. “I’ve checked in with every cell leader in Normandy, and they’ve checked down. We’ve accounted for all of our people - and the Hand left a stack of bodies of the people who came after her.”
    “And innocents,” Lori reminded them all grimly. Twenty-three people - including three children - had died when the attackers’ rockets had exploded.
    “Which is why we didn’t go after the Hand,” Papa replied bluntly. “Their reputation is pretty clear - anyone who attacks them dies. And if you kill one…” she could see the older man’s shrug in her mind. “If a Hand falls, another rises. She’d be replaced, and her replacement would come in with a vengeance.
    “And let’s be honest - with Vaughn prepared to flatten towns, the Hand may be our best chance at really stopping him.”
    A number of the other cell leaders grumbled at that, though no-one said anything specific. Most of Lori’s people wouldn’t trust the Protectorate now - and she didn’t blame them. But if her people hadn’t taken a stab at the Hand…
    “Do we have another movement forming?” she asked. “One we don’t know about?”
    “ Non ,” a soft voice replied. “ Dupe-moi une fois, honte a toi. Dupe-moi deux fois, honte a moi . It wasn’t rebels the last time someone blew up a building, was it?”
    “November has a point,” Papa agreed. “Not just Karlsberg, but that spate of attacks two months ago in Normandy - those weren’t us.”
    “We know who those were, in the end,” November confirmed, her voice heavily accented. “One of my girls pulled flight records. Colonel Brockson arrived in Nouveaux Normandy the evening before Hand Stealey.”
    “Are you sure?” Lori demanded. Colonel Brockson had been the mastermind behind a series of bloody ‘terrorist’ attacks in Normandy after they’d pulled in their own horns.
    “He’s been given new resources, ordered to expand his dirty tricks team into a