{"sf1_id":342770,"sf2_id":"k1VrBjb1","title":"La Cucaracha","author":"Hella","words":620,"posted_at":"2012-02-19T12:22:00.000Z","tags":["Cockroach","Sci-Fi"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/342770-la-cucaracha","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/k1VrBjb1","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/7d/f4/7df43cef-3ec1-49a4-8cf6-fc0401cf6344","description":"Gengineered cockroaches, in space","content":"The CFS _Santiago_ rumbled into the system, travelling in what would to an outside observer be 'reverse', with her after heavy reaction mass tank facing the perils of detritus, leaving scarring and scouring, whilst those within got to feel a sensation of gravity through bursts from the aft engines, to slow her entry speed into the system (no sense making a mess from hitting something at high velocity).\n\nThe Ender system, was home to a high concentration of asteroids (none of them as closely grouped together as in the old 'vids), and a habitable planet for very little water with higher land-masses (far more deserving of the name 'Earth'), the planet was called Klendathu.   \nIt's primary station, the Mecca of the locals was called LV-426.\n\nTo say it's owners were fans of old earth media, would be putting things very lightly. But the names, were not meerly out of a sense of media delight.   \nOh no, the locals had a perfectly good reason for the naming convention of their things.\n\nDrifting into locking position, with careful manouvering bursts, and a clank reverberatng throughout the hull, the throbbing-hiss as seals were matched and the lights went from red to green with an accompanying 'Seals Matched' from the computer.\n\n\"Welcome to LV-426,\" came the voice of the floating darkly carapaced cockroach, gesturing with his...or her multiple limbs, in a most jovial fashion. \"We greet you well and please watch the first step.\"\n\nIrony at it's finest, being as the ship and the station both, were in free-fall, z-grav, microgravity. Floating about, like a silly twat, by any other name. Still, they were all experianced spacers, so the lack of gravity (either under spin or thrust) wasn't bothering anyone.\n\nThe asteroid of LV-426 was cobbled out of, asteroids of course, but of old starships that brought the cockroaches, the 'Kakkerlak' to their homeworld when, so many years past as the last children of man's genetic sodomy, they had unlike their older 'siblings' had seen the light, and rather than fight in mankind's wars gave the literal finger, took what starships they could steal, and left.\n\nTo say that some considered them in the same vein as Benadict Arnold, Judas Iscariot or Ephialtes of Trachis would be putting it mildly. Not to say, that there wasn't a degree of jealousy from the space-bugs getting their own freedom before their vertebrate cousins.\n\n}{}{}{}{}{\n\nUilliam found himself, after much drifting, in the Church of Gigerism, the primary religion of the Kakkerlak. An acoylte was droning on about the religion, which was tinged with enough Truth but peppered with it's obligatory mysticism.\n\n\"..and it was, through the divine inspiration of Giger, that we were borne from the minds of men. For without his wisdom, man would not have given rise to us. And it was from the Great-Mother, Nadezhda....hers was Hope. And from her, came Hope. Through her and through Giger, we became. We took leave of mankind's petty jealousies and we took to our own wisdom.\"\n\nUilliam drifted past one of the myriad of 'Gargoyles', resisting the inclination to reach out to one and grab it to stop himself from drifting, he had learned on an early voyage here, that these were in fact the interred bodies of priests, acolytes, and the faithful. Not unlike the ossuary of the Catacombes de Paris. They were located at some...insane angles, achievable thanks to the lack of gravity throughout the station. And serving, to confuse the unwary, as to directions, or so it seems.\n\nEach gargoyle, was fashioned out of the previous owner's carapace, with the addition of a banana-shaped head, giving it the biomechanical look of a Xenomorph from the movies of which H.R. Giger's work became renowned.\n\n  \n  \n\n"}