Kincaid had expected it to be the same here. Telik was a perfectly Earth-like world: a little closer to a somewhat less luminous sun, its moon a little smaller and further out, but nothing really noticeable. He was telling himself that as the assault shuttle grounded and its hatch sighed open to admit rather hot, humid air-they were in the subtropics, and it was this hemisphere's summer. He hitched up his battle dress and began to follow Brokken and her staffers outside. There was the inevitable adjustment to a somewhat different air pressure, and he drew a breath before opening his mouth to pop his ears. . . .

Sheer, desperate determination not to lose face before the Telikans prevented him from throwing up.

What godawful chemical have they got in this atmosphere, anyway? he wondered from the depths of his nausea. His head spun, and he nearly lost his balance. He steadied himself against the short solid bulk of a Telikan in the crowded aisle-he hadn't noticed before just how crowded it was-and mumbled an apology through teeth that were tightly clenched to hold the rising tide of vomit behind them in check. And why the hell didn't they warn me?

But then he noticed that the Telikan to whom he'd apologized didn't look all that well herself.

And he finally recalled where he'd smelled such a fetor before.

Once, as a young second lieutenant, he'd pulled some groundside time on the noted beef-producing planet of Cimmaron. On a certain hot day, he'd chanced to come near what the locals called the stockyards.

This wasn't really the same, of course. Telikan shit didn't smell precisely like the bovine variety. But there was the same effect of too much of it, produced by thousands and thousands and thousands of herd animals packed into too small a space, listlessly defecating whenever and wherever the need took them and uncaringly leaving it for the heat to work on.

Emerging from the hatch into the open air should have been a relief from the shuttle's stuffiness. But the odor was even worse. And there was the sound. . . .

Looking around, Kincaid located its source. To the west, the land rose toward a mountain range. There, through the swathes high-tech firepower had torn in the subtropical vegetation, he could glimpse in the middle distance a kind of smudge against the foothills: a series of vast enclosures and low buildings. Something else he remembered from Cimmaron came from that direction: the collective sound of multitudes of dumb, doomed animals. But this wasn't really that kind of mindless lowing. The thousands of throats that produced it were Telikan ones, possessing the same kind of vocal apparatus as his comrades-in-arms because they belonged to the same species. And it held a subtle, indescribable, and deeply disturbing undercurrent of sentience, of something that cattle would mercifully never know.

The staffers around him looked even sicker than Kincaid felt. He reminded himself of the human colonies the Bugs still held after a mere few years . . . and his gorge rose again. He looked frantically around for something-anything-to concentrate on instead.

The sky was clear, and combat skimmers crisscrossed in their patrol patterns. At higher altitudes, armed assault shuttles did the same. Still more shuttles were descending in a steady procession, pouring the follow-up waves into the secured landing zones as rapidly as possible. On the ground, the entire perimeter was a hive of activity as Brokken's forces dug in. Nearby, although the Telikans didn't go in for formal honor guards, a number of Voroddon's troopers were in evidence.

The concept of powered combat armor wasn't new to the Union Ground Wing. SF 19 had found them using versions reminiscent of Theban War-era models in their clunky massiveness. Now they wore sleeker, more nearly form-fitting ones-Telikan-tailored equivalents of the TFMC's "combat zoots," as they'd been dubbed long ago by some aficionado of twentieth century popular culture. Now Voroddon, in battle dress himself, at the moment, advanced through a loose formation of zooted troops, clearly for security rather than for show. He gave Brokken the fist-to-chest salute of a race whose arms were so long they'd have done too much damage with their elbows if they'd tried the Terran kind.

"Welcome, Talnikah. I apologize for . . ." Voroddon gave a vague, all-encompassing gesture. "I would have preferred to direct your shuttle to a landing site further away from-"

"Don't worry, Talonmaster. Safety considerations were naturally paramount. Besides, we'd all have had to experience it sooner or later anyway." Brokken glanced westward at the obscene blot on the landscape, and hastily looked away again. "Are matters progressing satisfactorily . . . over there?"

"Well enough. We've gotten an organization in place. Unfortunately, I've had to detail more of my troops than I'd planned to for guard duty there, simply to prevent stampedes. You see, they're very . . . confused. The idea of beings shaped like themselves with the kind of powers that, by definition, only the Demons possessed is simply outside their frame of reference. We've had to deal with some actual . . . well, not resistance; they were too frightened for that. More a matter of terrified reluctance to leave their pens. And we haven't wanted to hurt them by forcing them."

Kincaid thought back to half-forgotten military history classes and recalled what the terrorism-ridden late twentieth century had called the "Stockholm Syndrome." This was worse. Much worse.

"Well," Brokken assured Voroddon, "now you'll be able to turn that sort of duty over to the regular infantry, and the specialists."

"Thank you, Talnikah! In addition to the diversion of power-armored resources, it's been hard on my personnel's morale. There are so many. . . ." Voroddon's expression wavered, and he tried again. "So many little ones."

Of course, Kincaid thought. Among the Telikans, it's always been the males who've brooded the eggs the females laid . . . and raised the young.

He watched as Brokken, in a spontaneous gesture, reached down and gave Voroddon's shoulder a hard, steadying squeeze.

The moment passed.

"Well," Brokken said, "let's proceed with the briefing I'm sure your staff has prepared for me."

"Of course, Talnikah. My headquarters bunker is this way."

As they walked across the newly cleared area, Kincaid hastened ahead of the gaggle of staffers-no great feat for a human, since Telikans' legs were short even in proportion to their stature-and drew abreast of the two flag officers.

"I presume there are no new reports from other landing zones?" he overheard Brokken ask.

"No. The situation's essentially unchanged since you departed from orbit. As you know, our initial landings enjoyed complete tactical surprise. That, and our fighter cover, enabled us to secure all our initial objectives."

"Yes, you did well. But what about the Demons?"

"We've been able to interdict everything they've thrown at us from long range. As of now, their behavior is as expected from the records we've all seen of the Terrans' experience in the Justin System. They're moving toward all the landing zones in massive columns, concentrating for what we anticipate will be coordinated planetwide counterattacks."

Kincaid spoke up, his privileged status as liaison officer empowering his natural chutzpah.

"One thing I don't understand, Talonmaster. Knowing those columns' location from orbital surveillance, why haven't you called in KISS strikes on them?"

He gestured upward toward low orbit, where a dozen Buurtahn-class ships-minelayers built on battlecruiser hulls-traced a pattern calculated to maintain coverage of the landing zones. One of the KISS system's virtues was that, like mines, the projectiles could be deployed from simple cargo holds, each of which could accommodate five thousand of them. And each Buurtahn had fifteen such holds.