Vorgens turned away and looked at the hills. Wordlessly, he reached out and tapped Aikens’ shoulder. The brigadier turned and stared in the direction of Vorgens’ gaze.
Coming over the hills, like a dark cloud of angry locusts, was the swarm of Komani flyers.
It was not pretty to watch a city being destroyed-
Vorgens stood at his post on the veranda, within earshot of the communications center that Aikens had set up, and saw the battle unfold.
The Komani split into two columns. One bore straight down on the Lesser City, driving for the warehouses by the waterfront. The other swung wide across the open suburban greenery and attacked the Greater City, aiming for the arsenal.
By noontime, the bright sunshine was blotted out by a pall of smoke rising from dozens of fires raging through Katan. Vorgens could see that most of the Greater City was a shambles. The Komani had slashed their way easily o the arsenal, and when they found it nearly empty, had turned their frustrated rage to the building itself. They set it ablaze, and then fanned out through the Greater City, looting, burning destroying. Now the arsenal was a blackened, gutted shell, and the buildings around it smoldered also.
But all this was secondary to the fierce battle flaring through the streets of the Lesser City.
The Komani column driving toward the warehouses had met stiff resistance from the citizens of Katan and from the hastily assembled brigade of Marines. Aikens’ defensive perimeter, drawn up a few blocks in front of the warehouses and swinging around to follow the riverside flank, had temporarily stopped the Komani onslaught.