Chapter Text
There were many many incubators in this chamber and far more in the rest of the nest. Some incubators crawled on the floor in some chambers, with fat white larva crawling over and under them to feed, but most were webbed to the walls and ceilings throughout the nest, their forelimbs stretched above their heads and the rear limbs spread wide. Every incubator had two soft fat lumps on its thorax with suction cups fitted, milking them continually, the white fluid flowing down tubes to the big extractor cylinder hanging from the ceiling in each chamber.
The nest was a hum of activity – quite apart from the continuous hum of the machinery, there were the larval sounds of the incubators, and the whir of wings as the nests' chitinous inhabitants moved around, laying eggs, fertilising eggs, moving cocoons to inner chambers, beetles cleaning waste fluid from incubators without the mating appendage (the females, apparently), removing dead beetles and other waste from the nest, and finding empty incubators to lay their own eggs in.
One incubator, near the top of one chamber, reached the point where the eggs had hatched and the larvae came struggling and squirming into the nest, to be scooped up and carried to a nursery chamber further inside.
A green cleaner beetle hummed around the ceiling, sucking up waste fluid that leaked from one incubator there before moving off, attracted to the newly empty incubator by its scent. The beetle was heavy with eggs that needed to be laid and it landed over the incubator, fluttering its wings mostly back under the iridescent wing-case as it waved its mandibles happily, tasting the air over the incubator.
Its front claws were on the soft outer carapace of the incubator, which shuddered, causing the beetle to shift, flicking its rear end up in alarm before settling back down, the tip of its ovipositor already descending, ready to mate with the incubator and lay its eggs. It clicked its mandibles, a harsh clicking sound that settled into a happier scratching kkkkkkk before opening again as the ovipositor found the entrance and began worming its way in, twisting and turning, growing soft and hard in sections to wriggle through the twisty passages of the incubator's insides, searching out the hot acidic egg incubation sac.
The beetle chrred softly, its tail end flicking up and down as it fed its ovipositor ever deeper. The happy kkkkk sounded next as it found the sac, the bigger space at the end of the long passageway folded up inside the warm creature. It was full of acid, and stretched from incubating many eggs over the cycles since it had been brought into the nest.
The beetle began vibrating the ovipositor now, sending eggs along it – hundreds of eggs, to drop into the acidic warmth of the egg incubation sac where they would be safe and warm, growing hundreds more cleaner beetles.
The cleaner beetle settled its feelers on the incubator as it suckled from the feeding-tube webbed into its mouthparts, pressing into the yielding surface even as it continued to vibrate its ovipositor, pumping more and more eggs into the incubator. The incubator was swelling beneath it and it had to adjust its position even as it continued laying eggs.
The incubator was shaking and shuddering, the cylinder over its mating appendage sucking happily away, the soft inner ring sliding up and down the long fat member, pulsing its random pattern as it did, the speed at which it moved always varying, and the suction tube at the top removing every drop of white fluid that spurted, dripped or leaked from the tip of the trapped member.
The beetle chittered again, mandibles rubbing together, even as the vibration slowed and the last few eggs were pushed along the ovipositor to join the rest packed in the hot acidic egg sac.
The ovipositor began to withdraw, folding up and retreating, scraping the walls of the incubator's passageway as it went, causing it to twitch and jerk unhappily in its webbing. The cleaner beetle chirred in concern as its safe perch threatened to no longer be safe and the wing cases opened momentarily, even as the rear lifted, dragging the retreating ovipositor a little faster, making it catch on some of the twists inside the incubator's passageway, before beetle and incubator both settled again.
Almost as soon as the ovipositor was fully retracted, a second tube unfurled from the beetle and pushed inside the incubator. This was a more flexible tube, smoother, that still softened and hardened in sections to allow the beetle to push the full length inside to where the eggs were nestled. Pulse after pulse of fertilising fluid spurted in, covering the eggs, making the incubator twitch and jerk again at the sensation and the coldness of the fluid and the further stretch as its sac tried to accommodate all the eggs and the seed to fertilise them, which mixed with the harsh acids in the egg sac to surround and cushion the eggs, bathing them in seed.
The beetle chittered, opening and closing its mandibles as the last few pulses of semen squirted out, before it pulled back out, retracting the tube.
The tip was still not fully retracted as it flew off to retrieve and remove a dead fellow beetle from the nest, leaving the incubator full and gravid with its eggs.