The Komani warriors fought mostly as single units. That was their glory and their strength. Their tactics were chaos and confusion. They merely blackened the sky and hit their enemy from every direction at once.
But the Terran flying brigade had the solidity and firepower of an airborne dreadnought. Like a mammoth cloud of death, the Terrans began sweeping the sky clean of the Komani.
Vorgens watched the progress of the aerial battle. But a comer of his mind refused to devote itself to the struggle overhead. Something was out of place. Something had changed in the picture on his viewscreen. What was it?
The main batteries of the dreadnaughts and cruisers were no longer firing into the hills, as he had ordered! But some of the battlewagons were shooting missiles and force beams across the valley floor, in the direction where the first attack had come from, at sunrise.
What’s going on? Vorgens wondered,
The Star Watchman began twisting the control knobs of his viewscreen. in an effort to get a panoramic view of all the action.
Komani warriors were advancing along the valley floor, from the same spot where the sunrise attack had started.
But that was just a holding attack, meant to draw us into the trap on our flanks.
And on those flanks, where the Komani should be pouring wave after wave of attackers—nothing. Silence. No enemy action.
The main attack was coming from our flanks, Vorgens reasoned. Now Okatar has stopped that attack. He’s left his men here over our vehicles, with no further support.