Aeryn looked out of the windows of the pickup truck at the passing forests of Velgrim IV. It was the middle of the night, leaving the only illumination around being the headlights of the truck and the mildly bioluminescent flowers growing up the trees.

The man driving was a local named Chuck, apparently Aeryn’s client couldn’t be arsed to send one of their own to take her out here but they seemed to want to be as minimally involved as possible. She wasn’t exactly in a good place to deny the kind of pay this job was offering.

Sometimes she wished she lived in the Interstellar Democratic Alliance, and not the fucking Corporate Free States. Paying for hormones was hell on earth and she couldn’t afford to hire a revenant just to get the whole gender thing sorted out permanently. Had she lived in the IDA she could just go to a hospital and get some alchemical bullshit that would fix her right up.

Regardless, the job was allegedly routine. The only issue was the “routine” in question was going into a dormant Swarm Hive to grab some eggs. A Swarm Brood of a more militaristic bent had tried to take Velgrim about 25 years ago, just before Aeryn was born. Velgrim was defended, rather easily, when a single pissed-off revenant defeated the Brood Queen in single combat after they sacked her library. A lot of the hives were lost to infighting, but a few simply went dormant and shut down entirely.

It was obvious why her employer wanted the eggs, it was very well known that Swarm Eggs had absurd healing properties. You could put some of the goop from one of those on an arm that had been cut clean off and it would fully regrow within 48 hours if you had enough nutrients. The issue was getting these eggs for study or use was nigh-impossible.

Cohabitant broods would never hand them over. Even if you asked nicely by offering them biomass, minerals, or technology. On the other hand, the more militant broods would sooner destroy their own eggs than let you get ahold of them. This left aberrations like dormant hives the only reliable source.

So here Aeryn was, doing something incredibly stupid for good but not great pay, in the middle of the night, with her only contact being a guy named Chuck, who would probably book it if anything went wrong.

Aeryn supposed it could be worse.

“Alright girlie, we’re coming up on the hive now, don’t keep me too long, don’t like being out here.” The man said, scratching the back of his balding head.

“I wasn’t planning on it.” She replied, putting on a pair of gloves and grabbing a flashlight from the side of the backpack her employer had left with Chuck. Apparently, it was enchanted to prevent damage to the samples. At the very least her employers had provided all the gear necessary for the job.

Ensuring that her overalls were properly fixed and that the rest of her gear was in check, the woman double checked the handgun she kept by her side. She really didn’t want to be caught in a Swarm Hive without something to defend herself. Aeryndidn’t quite trust her employers. Sure, they may have done it before, but this was still very much going into a lion's den.

The truck finally came upon the hive structure, and it was about what she expected for the swarm. It was a bizarre, alien, fleshy-looking structure that sat above the surface, undulating softly as if breathing. Any parts that weren’t covered in a hard carapace were wet like internal viscera. Aeryn was lucky she wasn’t squeamish or else she would be in for a rough night.

As soon as the truck stopped Aeryn hopped out and made her way towards the obvious entrance, she didn’t want to extend this any longer than she had to. Her employers had provided a map, which she pulled up on her wrist communicator. It showed her current location in the hive, both vertically and horizontally, and the fastest route to the egg chamber that she was supposed to grab eggs from.

As she approached the entrance she could feel the warm wet air wash over her. Luckily, it didn’t quite smell bad; it was honestly bizarrely sweet. From what little she knew of the swarm, the smell of their hives was different to each person, at least for humans. Something about built-in genetic responses to their pheromones.

She wasn’t sure what it meant for her, but it at least made her first steps into the cavern of flesh much more bearable. Fortunately for her,the egg chamber was at least accessible from the ground floor, as it formed a central vestibule from which all other levels of the hive connected. It would be a bit of a hike inside, but hopefully it would be an uneventful one.

It was rather odd but there were no remains of any of the hive’s denizens scattered about. She would have expected them to have eventually starved when they entered dormancy but there was simply nothing, as if something was doing cleaning duty. This was to be expected, the briefing said that the only thing still in here was the hibernating broodmother, who slept in the center of the egg chamber and hadn’t shown any signs of waking for the past 25 years.

As she followed the map, her boots squicking over the fleshy ground, the sweet scent only got stronger. Honestly, it did a lot to ease her nerves about being in what was essentially a massive living organism, feeding off of who knows what.

The dark pulsing corridors were basically indistinguishable, so without the scent and the map Aeryn felt she would have problems finding her way around. There must be some secret to navigating this place, but it was almost certainly beyond her, or any human for that matter.

As she came upon the egg chamber itself she was left in awe at the sheer size of it. It was the first space she had found in the whole hive that was properly illuminated. Bioluminescent bulbs hung in the air coating the whole room in a soft blue glow, revealing both the dimly glowing eggs, and the broodmother slumbering in the middle.

Aeryn had only seen broodmothers in degraded footage from that 25 year distant invasion. The Corporate Free States didn’t have many cohabitant hives so they didn’t often show up in the news, and she hadn’t had much incentive to look them up before now.

Up close, the broodmother looked like a bizarre cross between a human and a strange spider. Twelve limbs made up the form of the broodmother, eight being linked together and forming a main body structure, followed by another four which seemed to be used for different levels of dexterity. Two large claw structures on the front, presumably for attacking and grabbing things off the ground, and two smaller appendages, presumably for fine dexterity work, both attached to a more traditional human-like torso. It was all finished off with a human-esque head accompanied by a few sets of horns, mandibles, and two long claws extending off the creature's back. The whole broodmother was much larger than Aeryn was, about the size of the truck she had come in.

Despite its terrifying appearance, Aeryn found the presence of the broodmother comforting for some reason she couldn’t quite explain. There were definitely worse monsters out there as far as Aeryn was concerned.

Aeryn climbed down a pre-installed rope ladder into the chamber below her, before making her way over to a clutch of eggs. She wasn’t quite interested in staying around here for too long, so she decided to just get things over with rather quickly rather than spending all her time sightseeing.

She kneeled down, taking one of the large eggs in her gloves. They were soft and squishy, about what she expected given the rest of the hive itself, the egg was a purplish lattice surrounding a central sac of glowing blue liquid. The whole thing was pretty gross, like picking up wet innards, but Aeryn wasn’t exactly squeamish.

Aeryn pulled her backpack off her shoulders and opened it up, before trying to shove the egg inside. Unfortunately for Aeryn, she never got the chance.

She felt herself tugged into the air in two massive claws, before being rapidly turned around in an instant, meeting the glowing blue eyes of the broodmother staring into her own. The broodmothers flat face gave no notable expression, but Aeryn didn’t need facial expressions to know that the creature before her was furious.

“An intruder in my hive… trying to steal eggs, are we?” A resonant, feminine, hissy voice asked. It didn’t come from the creature's mouth, but somewhere in its chest, loud enough that Aeryn could feel it reverberate through her chest.

“I-I was just-” Aeryn tried to say, only for the broodmothers smaller claws to touch her lips, silencing her in an instant.

“Silence human, I have no use for excuses, I will know everything soon enough.” The creature continued, her blue eyes glowing deeper.

Aeryn felt something probe against the edges of her mind, something vast and calculating, primal and ancient. She wasn’t trained against mental intrusion, so her mind opened like a book for this creature.

She tried to struggle physically, tried to wrest free, but the feeling of intrusion pressing against her most private thoughts left her exhausted. Everything she was, everything she wanted to be was exposed to this creature, and shamefully it left Aeryn with soft butterflies in her chest.

Why was she getting turned on? There was no reason that this situation should be in any way erotic, she was having her mind pried open, she was in more danger than she ever had been in her life, but being held 5 feet in the air by a creature which could rip her in half in an instant did something in a primal part of her brain that she couldn’t quite parse, at least not now.

The worst part was that the link, in a sense, went two ways. While she couldn’t probe into the broodmothers mind, she could feel the creature's emotions as she was looking through things. It went from anger, to pity, to curiosity, to wicked excitement in what felt like hours but could only have been a few minutes at most.

Eventually, the probing receded, and Aeryn was left gasping for air as she fell entirely limp in the broodmother’s talons. Shewas panting, sweating, and everything in between, as if the task of having her mind torn open was the most exercise she had gotten in years.

The broodmother was not done yet, however, and lifted Aeryn’s limp head with one of the claws. The claw being so close came with a whiff of that sweet scent from earlier, but it was different now, it was all the sweeter, and made her feel so foggy and docile.

“Oh yes, you are perfect aren’t you. You poor, sweet girl~” The creature said, letting out a series of delighted clicks.

“W-what?” Aeryn attempted to ask, trying to understand where the change in tone had come from.

One of the broodmother’s claws ran down the front of Aeryn’s overalls, tearing her overalls to pieces, leaving the human in a sports bra and a pair of boy shorts. It was then, when exposed warm, humid air, that Aeryn realized that she was embarrassingly hard.

The claw then began to run over the contours of Aeryn’s body, leaving the girl gasping for an altogether different reason. “W-what are y-you-”

Aeryn was interrupted as the claw ran up her hard clit through her boyshorts, leaving her gasping for air. The broodmother let out another pleased series of clicks.“I knew something was different about you when I first saw you, but it makes so much more sense now.”

The claw then moved up and tore the sports bra off from the front, leaving Aeryn’s breasts exposed to open air. “Your scent, it’s different from most human females, just slightly so, not only that it reeked of long term stress hormones, among other things. A very curious thing for an egg thief. Now it makes so much more sense. You were desperate. Isn’t that right?”

Aeryn nodded, leading to another pleased series of clicks. The claw caressed the human's breasts, leaving her shuddering. Aeryn couldn’t believe she was being teased by a goddamn swarm broodmother.

“Yes, that was the other thing, your genetics, they are delightful. You see, transgender humans, such as yourself, are so wonderful for the swarm; given that you show such an impressive aptitude for transformation. Sure it is far more crude than what the swarm could do for you, but it is transformation nonetheless.”

The claw cut through Aeryn’s boyshorts, leaving her throbbing clit exposed to open air. Aeryn was burning now, not with fear, not with embarrassment, but with burning hot desperate need. The sweet scent from earlier was so strong now, it was so hard to feel in danger when everything smelled so nice and pleasant. She just wanted to breathe it in deeply. Each breath made the burning need worse, and Aeryn couldn’t quite consider it a bad thing by this point.

“I see my pheromones are working now. I had to adjust them slightly to elicit a more appropriate response. Different humans are best rewarded by different things after all, and you seem particularly motivated by submission.”

A claw gently wrapped around her exposed clit, and gently stroked it. Aeryn’s vision flooded with stars as she let out a desperate moan. Aeryn bucked her hips into the claw, her every thought purged from her head in an instant. Something about being stroked by claws beat hands in every possible way. Something about the hard chitinous exterior that made the whole experience nothing short of ecstatic.

“It’s quite a shame you had to resort to stealing my eggs to even attempt to become your true self, through the crude tools you have available to you. I could make you perfect. You would join my hive, I would change you, make you what you were always meant to be: a worker in service of the hive. This ecstasy you are feeling now is nothing compared to what I could give you then. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

At the moment, lost in the throes of passion, as the claws slowly stroked up and down her dick, Aeryn couldn’t find any error in that thinking. If it led to more of this, there was no reason to deny it.

Aeryn, being beyond words by this point, nodded in reply, leading to another series of pleased clicking. “Oh so malleable, you will be perfect.”

Aeryn heard fleshy movements occur around her, but she wasn’t paying attention. She didn’t need to pay attention, her world was pleasure, docility, and need. The heat within her continued to build and build and build, leaving her on the edge of an orgasm she needed like nothing else.

Aeryn felt her back pressed into a mat of fleshy matter, as tendrils wrapped around all her limbs, holding them rigid at her sides. She didn’t care though, she was still staring dumbly into the eyes of the creature giving her pleasure, who had her so close to a much needed orgasm.

“P-please…” Aeryn begged, gasping each and every breath. She needed this orgasm more than anything, she needed it now.

“Of course, my subject~” The broodmother replied, quickly bringing Aeryn over the edge.

Aeryn’s body became wracked with pleasure, amplified in two parts by both her general exhaustion and that sweet scent that permeated the air. It was as if her mind and body had been twisted to respond to the broodmother more than any other partner to have ever embraced her.

It was bliss, it was perfection, she didn’t ever want to leave. She could stay, right? She could stay here? Not go back to her crappy apartment and do more stupid degrading odd jobs just to eat? She could just feel like that again and again and again?

As the orgasm receded, and Aeryn’s mind cleared to a degree, she realized where she was. She was hanging several feet above the ground, strapped into an open cocoon of sorts. The broodmother was staring at her intently, claws held in front of her.

“This is how we will make you perfect, my subject, where we will make you part of the swarm.” The broodmother said, leaning their torso forward. “I can see you already want that.”

Despite a gut reaction of fear, of terror at what was about to occur to her, she knew it was simply an innate animal part of her that was terrified of change. It was the same part of her brain that made her delay transitioning as long as she did.

She belonged here with her queen. There was nowhere else she would rather be.

“I-I do…” Aeryn said, which was met with another pleased series of clicks.

“Wonderful~.” Her queen replied, placing a fleshy mask over her face, which immediately deployed a tube down her throat. It provided air and a soft warming goop that flowed into her stomach.

“I will see you soon, my subject.” Aeryn’s queen said, as the cocoon closed up, and filled with a thick viscous liquid, leaving Aeryn in darkness.

Soon, she fell off to blissful sleep as her mind and body changed to her queen's desires.