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Atop their heads is a pair of crescent moon shaped communirad detectress parabola, as if they had ears above their onyx black, beady, peer ports, which eerily almost resemble eyes. At all four corners of their extended appendigae are massive battering rams, much like arms and legs, each trireme power and destructive ability five to six fold. At the end of each mitt was a good half dozen digits, and each of those paw-claws looked like a sharpened Buick, carefully honed to deadly designs on the carnage of past victims and their space craft.

The speed of our craft continued accelerating at a pace we'd never trained for. We had to cross the divide in record time and we had the negative dulcimer resistonanance drive to do it. The comfort of near deep space that had so graciously given us solace was already out of sight, and the growing blackness pounced upon us like a million jaguars on a moonless night. Pulling eight G's for fifteen hours had taken its toll on all of us, but that wasn't what was on our minds. On my mind was just two things, a rapidly growing hemorrhage and the thought of Koandas.

The Koandas were soulless killing machines because that's how they were built. You can't build a killing machine and give it a soul, that would eventually lead to a mutiny and very likely to the death of the creator. Indeed, less than half the machines in existence had been given souls, but very few of them were of the killing variety. Surely you've read enough scifi to know all this already. And they are likewise Godless, and also by design, but this I know too because I speak regularly with my own God, and he assured me that they have none. And I believe my God, that's why I capitalize his name when I speak of Him… also the H in Him, He, His sorts of pronouns, but that's not the matter at hand.

Awe inspiring, soulless, godless, insatiable killing machines, and though only to my inner dialogue which you have the good fortune to read, am I even now able to admit the true, deep and horrifying fear of them that fully consumes me every day of my life.

And all this comes to mind now because of the two problems it made as real as solar system drift. Firstly because, despite my flawless façade, I'm scared to paralysis of these unholy devices of unspeakable torture, mutilation and slow but certain death, and secondly because my ship is now hurtling like a Texas crushing meteor headlong and unwaveringly in to the heart of their homeland.

That and my brain was hemorrhaging.

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