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Chapter 17 - Killer Koandas of Quadrant-5 (page-3)
Sure, the program was panned as runaway deficit spending on the part of a decadent governing council with a blank future equity checkbook in hand and an itchy inking finger, which it was by any measure. It was a monumental waste of resource unrivaled by anything else real or imagined, past or future (or so said the damned Time Travelers special interest group,) but hey, if you want to get your word out far and wide, it's still cheaper than bombing civilians with leaflets. Especially when it's a planet of nothing but trees. Past such leaflet campaigns on entirely forested planets resulted in a public relations nightmare. Something about raining down the dead, mutilated bodies of their interplanetary cousins. That's way self-aware trees were hunted to extinction a thousand years ago, they couldn't understand the importance of Koanda awareness. Their loss. The billboards, each one several hundred feet tall, showed the mechanized blackguards in their truest light. They're a make of ancient robotic device bent on nothing less than the extermination of all life, whether a human on a peaceful camping trip to Azon, an asteroid bee snug in his colonial honey factory or a burning berry on a burning bush. Nothing could ever be safe from them. But they aren't people or even plants. Koandas are a sophisticated sort of heavy machinery constructed in a place before time. Some argue they come from a parallel dimension where God lacks the balls to smite such terrifying beasts, but I don't buy it. Each cybernetic brute weighs over twenty tons, even in the zero gravity environment of deep space, and are constructed of two distinct sets of the most rare and impenetrable metal alloys. With nearly equal parts ebonite and ivoriuminum, these two tone dealers of death have not only the strength of force and sheer will to insure the swift (but very painful) demise of any wayward simpleton who should wander in to their realm, but their patchwork design was such to instill a psychological meltdown just upon seeing them. Their four appendages and thick head and neck are all covered by a bristly coating of needle sharp cilia, each fiber with the intelligence of the brightest librarian of gangbangon-6, the encyclopedic planet, and each with a one-track mind set on nothing but the killing of all that lives. Their thick torso is rumored to contain the dark matter power plants needed to move their tremendous girth with unbeatable speed and also keep them warm. This is little more than speculation, mind you, as none have encountered their demonic soul destroying ways and lived long enough to send more than a fifteen-second transmission. This page may have been updated since this "Printer Friendly" page was created. Read this passage in its current form online at www.tekjansen.com/chapters/17-3.php.