Not much of a welcoming committee, she thought, as she slung her personal bag into the back of the ATV. The driver was scarcely wearing clothes, let alone a uniform.

His salute had been sloppy, too.

Chang chewed her lip. They'd told her this was going to be tough. This was Planet Wexel, an infamous eco-disaster world of slash-and-bum agriculture and blatant industrial pollution.

In the aftermath of the Laowon Era, Wexel had succumbed to a pathological politics dominated by a tiny aristocratic elite.

Immense regions were ruled by the gun rather than the ballot.

Intense poverty had become the lot of millions in the repressive tropical states. The ITAA was increasingly concerned.

Her bags arrived at last, shoved in place by a couple of perspiring porters wearing locators clipped to their heads. The locators marked them out as property of the Patash-Do State Prison System.

The ATV moved out. Chang stared out at the terminal buildings as they went past. The paint was dull; there was a broken window on the ground floor.

A rusting truck was set up on blocks in a cargo bay. They passed through an unmanned gatepost and turned onto a four-lane approach highway. Various ramps joined the road as it curved down to meet a six-lane highway.

The roads were in terrible shape, truly terrible, with potholes like craters, and broken railings, rusted and torn, projecting up like daggers in places.

The highway was flanked by endless billboards, which jammed the view in an unbroken line leading into the distance. They were a peculiar melange of images. Among the commercial ones advertising beer and household products there were many that amounted to enormous written demands for the execution of this or that specific person. These demands were written in stark headline black, charging so-and-so with subversion of the State of Patash-Do and demanding the death penalty on behalf of the Committee for the Preservation of Society.

Some of the other billboards featured enormous skulls, with a conspicuous bullet hole through the forehead. Beneath this was a slogan: "Get them first and they can't get you!"

Soap, video, beer, and skulls with bullet holes. Chang winced.

The ATV bounced through a section of raggedy concrete and rusted-out steel dividers.

The city of Doisy-Dyan lay dead ahead, a small tower park of black buildings. Black glass and steeltone filments were clearly popular with local architects.

The billboards petered out as they drew through residential areas. Small suburban towns of stone and brick were followed by buildings set behind high redbrick walls. Data-beam reflectors, made from warped squares of glass, sat atop fifty-foot-high poles at every corner.

Ground cars with a military rake and conspicuous armor plate dominated the traffic. Donkey carts and rickshaws filled up the slow lanes.

Farther in, the buildings became more general, with taller structures, gaunt tenements, glass blocks.

Bars, restaurants, and shops lined the streets.

In a public plaza there loomed a sculpture with a remarkable resemblance to a giant guillotine. Chang stared at it with startled eyes. Then they were past it and the view ahead broadened as they approached a wide, mud-colored river.

A bridge loomed, a rusting green colossus. Then the view vanished. The bridge was walled in with more billboards, mostly of the commercial variety.

"Chugga-Chugga-Chug-Chug-Chug" one shrieked in yellow letters. "Chug beer, the best!" another howled.

Chang murmured to herself in quiet disgust.

The ATV plunged forward. There was a brief continuation of the urban scene. Ancient buildings of considerable size, their stone walls a murky black from soot, lined the roads. Tenement alleys, teeming with people, led away from the road. And then the city was behind them and the walls of an ITAA barracks rose up ahead.

The MPs on duty at the gate were at least in uniform, although they said nothing to the driver about his clear violations of dress regs.

The barracks consisted of a two-story administrative block in red brick and a group of green armortac buildings that huddled and clumped behind the admin block.

At the main entrance to the admin building a laconic pair of lieutenants was waiting for her. Neither was in proper uniform either, but from overdressing rather than under.

After introductions Chang was escorted to her new office through a building that was clean but scruffy.

Again there was a crying need for a new coat of paint.

She was left alone with the man she was replacing, one Colonel Avatar Huron.

Chang left the shades on. She'd been given a thorough briefing on this command. Colonel Huron had not come out of the briefing very well. Then, it had to be noted, no one had done well in command at this post in centuries. One reason they'd selected Luisa Chang for the position.

"Welcome to Wexel, Colonel Chang." Huron was a beefy, red-faced type-seriously overweight, too.

"Thank you, Colonel Huron." At his invitation Chang went around the desk and sat in Huron's chair.

Huron smiled, enigmatically. He had heard they'd brought in a hotshot, a scorcher from Cluster Command. A female colonel in the Orbital Marine Corps, one who'd passed out first in her class at Academy. She was just the type to get chewed up bad in this hellhole.

"Perhaps I should bring you up to the moment in affairs around here," he said. "Some of the characters you'll be dealing with." He began pacing up and down.

"Yes, please do."

"First of all, Blake wants watching, he's devious and sly and prone to ignoring orders of all types."

"Captain Blake, 624 OSF?"

"That's the one, a difficult man if ever I met one."

"Mmm, I see," she said, wondering really. Blake had a near incredible combat record.

"Captain Cachester, of course, is out to destroy you. You need to be aware that the Fleet officers here are crazier than any you've ever met before. Guaranteed!" Hrudna rubbed his hands together as if anticipating Luisa's troubles ahead with considerable pleasure.

"I see," she said. Cachester had virtually no combat record whatsoever. Instead he'd spent most of his career on Wexel, two consecutive five-year stretches. He was known to be a favorite of Admiral Heidheim, however.

"What else do I have to look forward to?" she said.

"Commodore Benx!" Hrudna beamed.

"He's said to be difficult."

"Hah! Difficult, eh? He's as prickly as a spine toad and almost as venemous. Completely in cahoots with the Cowdrays who control the smuggling through Cowdray-Kara Air&Space. I advise you to have as little to do with him as possible."

"They told me I would have my bands full here."

"No doubt at all," said Hrudna, who proceeded to work his way through the other staffing problems she faced before launching into a general lecture on the intractable nature of evil old Wexel.

Finally Hrudna finished and, after mercifully brief farewells to the office staff, headed for the spaceport.

Luisa was left to stow her gear in her quarters and look around the barracks.

In the evening them was supposed to be a reception for a new CO in the officers' mess, a narrow room on the top floor of the admin block. Portraits of previous commanders of the 624 Orbital Strike Force were grouped on the walls by era. Battle flags with famous names, from Hector to Idanthus and Melgijion, hung from the ceiling.

Chang found the place almost empty. A couple of staff sergeants were drinking beer in a corner, and there were a few staff orderlies on hand to fetch drinks and snacks, but there were no officers.

She hesitated for a moment and then went over and got a beer herself and joined the staff sergeants, Ronx and Lagedeen.

"We haven't met but I feel I know you, you were in so much of the briefing material."

Ronx was a big cheerful man with a face composed of brown slabs. "That's because we pretty much run this place."

"Without me and Ronko this place would grind to a halt," Lagedeen said, raising his beer can to her and then taking a hit. Lagedeen was a big-bellied man with a round, red face and twinkling eyes.

"And don't forget Povet, she's one of us, too."

"Yeah, you'll meet her later, I'm sure, Colonel." She sipped the beer; it wasn't great but it was cold.

"Where's everybody else, do you think?" she ventured.

"There's gladiators on TV," Ronx said.

"Yeah, the Fleet boys here are heavy gamblers. All the sports they bet on."

"They'll be here right after the nine-hour bell. You'll see."

"Except Blake, of course."

"Oh, why is that, he's fighting on TV himself?"

Lagedeen chuckled. "He'd have to be in your briefing, eh? The way he goes on."

These two were a regular old pair of charmers, she decided.

The briefs on them said they were bought, but cheap. But then they did not control the areas where money could be really made, the spaceports on Wexel. It was the Fleet Officers Corps here that was the problem.

"So where might the heroic Captain Blake be?" she said quietly.

"Ah, well," Lagedeen said.

Ronx waved a hand. "He's upcountry. Somewhere in the Skullas, chasing Liberators again."

"Won't see him till tomorrow," said Lagedeen.

"The captain takes field duty often?"

"All the time, hardly ever stays here. Of course, it ain't safe for him here, you know. The CPS is trying to kill him again."

"The Committee for the Preservation of Society," said Lagedeen helpfully.

"Yes, of course."

"Very important down here in Doisy-Dyan."

"They've tried before?"

Ronx and Lagedeen chuckled together. "Oh, you bet they have. But that Blake, he's a wild one."

"Best security man I've ever seen. You want to know something?" Lagedeen became conspiratorial and dropped his voice to a whisper. "I think he's Military Intelligence. Not just that he's crazy, with that combat record of his that's what you'd expect, but there's something else. He's just too damn good for it to be anything else."

Ronx chuckled. "Charlie, you got a helluva imagination."

Luisa sipped beer. It was possible. Blake could well be from the Third Directorate, the Military Intelligence service that stiffened the spine of ITAA structure. The situation here was mucky enough; there was no reason not to expect MI intrusion.

The nine-hour bell went. Within seconds the officers-a-half-dozen fleet ensigns, two lieutenants, and Captain Cachester---- were in the mess.

Captain Cachester introduced himself with a firm handshake and then a salute. The salute was exaggerated; some of the other men laughed.

He was a tall, good-looking fellow with hair allowed to gray atop a craggy profile. Physically he was in his mid-forties, with a paunch and other signs of a lack of exercise. His manner was affable and outgoing.

"Welcome to Doisy-Dyan, Colonel. I hope you have a good stay."

"So do I, Captain, so do I."

There was an opacity about Cachester that was vaguely alarming. Here was a man out to be mysterious.

"Of course, we've all been briefed, Colonel. We all know that you've been decorated for field service, for instance. We know you've served two five-year terms, too. So we're aware of what a distinguished field officer we have joining us. I'm sure once you've shaken down you'll find your role to play."

Role to play? she wondered to herself, and was too stunned for a moment to reply.

Cachester moved close and tried to put a hand on her shoulder, preparatory to slipping his arm over her shoulder and taking social possession of her and the situation.

Luisa sidestepped the hand and moved to keep her personal space inviolate. This was basic primate behavior, she thought, and Cachester was attempting to assert a crude kind of physical dominance.

She knew he knew perfectly well what he was doing.

She thought briefly of kicking him in the right kidney preparatory to rendering him unconscious, but got a grip on herself and favored him with an opaque smile.

Cachester let her know that he knew that she knew that the battle was on.

"This way, Colonel Chang."

In short order Luisa met the other officers and NCOs and tried to place them in the briefing structures.

Captain Basonth and Lieutenant Crook, sergeants Molder and Drambeek, ensigns Younts, Kishuki, and Bladeev, all the young men and women who represented the ITAA Fleet Officers Corps on Wexel.

Finally, there was Major Yang, who had just flown in from Cowdray-Kara. As chief The Air officer, Yang was another new element in the picture. Tac Air Command had shifted his predecessor without warning Scopus Central. That had Chang's superiors wondering if Tac Air was siding with Fleet Command in the coming struggle for Wexel's military.

The only important absentees, in fact, were Commodore Benx, who did not even send a welcoming message, and OSF Captain Blake, who was rarely to be found in Doisy-Dyan by all accounts.

After a while she found herself out on a veranda, alone at the far end of the mess.