While the troopers were holding open the escape route and the engineers were making it ready to handle the main body of the Mobile Force, the rest of the Force was to fall back slowly toward the escape slopes. A special task unit of ten dreadnaughts, including Vorgens’ flagship, was to form a rear guard, and to keep the Komani attack stalled and off balance until the final dash for freedom-
‘That’s the plan,” Vorgens muttered to himself as he watched the computer’s steady stream of orders flash across the viewscreen at his elbow. “Now to see if it will work.”
XI
Breakout
•*r* %
Okatar Kang stood at the crest of a hill with the first rays of the rising sun at his back. Below him, the valley floor was still cloaked in darkness, but the Komani technicians had set up a battery of viewscreens that showed the Mobile Force.
The Kang paced restlessly behind the technicians, who were seated before their mobile viewscreens. The highpitched shriek of Terran engines was wafting up from the valley.
‘”What are they doing?” Okatar demanded of no one in particular.
One of his nobles, pacing alongside him, answered, “They are preparing for the battle, starting their engines.”
The viewscreens suddenly went blank. Before Okatar could say anything, the technicians had readjusted them, and the pictures of the sprawling Terran armored Force reappeared.
‘”They’ve put up an energy shield,” one of the technicians said.
“We expected that,” said the noble at Okatar’s elbow. “It cannot be a very powerful shield, since its generating equipment must be small and mobile. An hour’s worth of force beams should saturate it.”