The Beast of Beta Shaula Written on September 12, 2026 by Jack Stein
Categories: fiction, science fiction, smut
Tags: size difference, teratophilia, transmasc
Drake Jensen, Psychic Grade 5, graduate Summa Cum Laude of the Proxima Centauri Institute of Transcendent Studies, voted “Best Dressed” by his classmates for three consecutive years, and all-around bright young lad, is struggling just a bit with his first real job.
Over years of study, he’s honed his unique skills. He’s learned the foundations of interplanetary commerce, politics, and economics. He’s practiced the delicate art of diplomatic negotiation, the subtle talents of persuasion. At last, all his hard work has culminated in this assignment… to the Beta Shaula mining collective, maintenance division.
He’s having a rough go of it.
On day one he’s attached to a repair crew for a high-priority job in a collapsed mining site. It’s a hell of a work order. Assess the damage, clear the main shaft, extract the survivors–preferably before they suffocate to death.
There is a lot of grumbling among the miners about a psychic taking up a valuable slot on the crew. It doesn’t help that he is neither particularly tall nor especially broad. “Skinny” isn’t exactly the word for him, but “soft around the edges” does a good job of summing his body up.
But at the end of the day it isn’t about his youth or his height or the fact that his beard hadn’t quite grown out of the wispy teenage phase yet. Their disdain is on a purely utilitarian basis: they make it abundantly clear that if he can’t haul 100 lbs of gear up a hill solo, then they considered him less than worthless.
It doesn’t get any better when they get to the site of the collapse. It’s a wide vertical shaft, twenty feet down and another hundred feet up. Where there should be scaffolding connecting the entrance tunnel to the auxiliary corridors, there’s nothing but jagged scraps of torqued metal. The primary electrical system is out. The emergency lighting flickers weakly. The intermittent blue glow is just enough to see the tunnel to the crew quarters, all the way across the chasm, collapsed and blocked by rubble.
It’s also just enough for the crew to see that something alive is squirming around at the bottom of the shaft.
“Shit, would you look at size of that thing?”
“Dude, it’s got like SIX.”
“You sure that’s not its legs?”
“No, THOSE are its legs.”
“Is that a mouth INSIDE its mouth?”
“That ain’t a mouth, bro.”
“How can you even tell?”
“Jesus. Can you imagine getting railed by that thing?”
“At least you wouldn’t need lube.”
Raucous laughter echos from the other miners.
The tallest one gets bold: “How much’ll you pay me to do it?”
More laughter. “Shut the fuck up!”
“No way, I’m serious! Make it worth my while.”
A bark from up ahead cuts them off. “Knock it off. We’ve got work to do.”
Crew Chief Nwaka is all business. He runs them through the game plan briskly: skirt the ledge around the shaft to anchor a guideline along the wall. Disassemble the laser cutter. Hand-carry it across piece by piece. Reassemble the cutter. Clear the shaft. Leave the alien megafauna alone, you bunch of fuckin’ dumbasses.
It takes about half an hour for the crew chief and two of the most sure-footed miners to secure the guideline. Senior MechE Sethi oversees the remaining two miners taking apart the laser cutter. Jensen’s not certified to even breathe on the cutter, much less assist with disassembly. This leaves him, as he has been the whole time, unwanted and useless.
With a sigh, he shrinks back and tries to stay out of the way. This is not what he’d imagined his first assignment would be. He’d envisioned something more to the tune of high society intrigue or interstellar espionage. But he doesn’t even mind the dirt and grime and heavy lifting. It’s the bit about being absolutely useless that really gets to him. “Mind Over Matter” is the school motto he’s lived under for eighteen years. Apparently in the real world you still need a firm set of quads to carry your own weight.
Jensen peers into the blown-out mine shaft. It’s only about twenty feet down–shallow enough that it’s easy to see that there’s something big nesting at the bottom of it. He’s studied plenty of alien fauna, but this is a new one for him. In the flickering glow of the emergency lighting, he can’t quite make out its whole form, but what he can see looks like some kind of massive insect.
He catches a glimpse of shiny chitin, elegant limbs folded in a neat coil and articulated in far too many places, and–yeah–a number of swaying probosces dripping with thick mucous. They’re PROBABLY not genitalia. But he can’t blame the miners for making the comparison. He also can’t entirely blame them for wondering what it would be like to…
Nwaka’s sharp order snaps him to attention: the guide line’s set. Time to move. Jensen bounces to his feet, ready to carry his share of the gear, but Sethi almost slaps his hand away when he reaches for the disassembled machine.
“Don’t even think about it. We lose this cutter, we’re fucked. Stick to the rear and just try not to trip us up.”
Jensen doesn’t need to be a psychic to pick up the implication that Sethi wouldn’t trust him to lift his own dick. Since he is, he has the pleasure of mentally hearing the precise expression the woman is inclined to deploy to describe his ineptitude. But he’s determined to be professional. So he falls in line as the crew very, very carefully traverses the ledge.
Single-file, the miners work their way slowly ahead of him. It’s a tight fit. The ledge is a foot wide at best, just an inch at worst. Their hands full of heavy machinery, the safety line seems like an inadequate guardrail. And the damn lights keep flickering off.
One of the men nods down at the pit and whispers something, followed by a snigger. “Eyes on task!” snaps Nwaka from across the pit.
“Yessir!” comes the reply.
Jensen clings to the guide line with both hands and inches forward. Ahead of him, Sethi lugs the cutter chassis under one arm. In his peripheral, the thing in the pit shifts. This far away, he can’t read its mind. He can only pray it’s not hungry.
They’re just a few feet from safety when the lights flicker out at just the wrong time.
Jensen’s psychic senses “hear” Sethi panic a split second before her foot goes flying out from underneath her and skids off the ledge. Metal clatters against stone as the chassis goes tumbling into the pit. He springs forward instantly, lunging for Sethi’s wrist.
In the pitch black, his extrasensory training comes through. His body instinctively knows exactly where Sethi will be. Sure and true, he catches her hand.
“Up! C’mon, I’ve got you!”
Sethi scrabbles at Jensen’s arm. He’s straining under her weight, his shoulders are burning and the guide line digs into his other hand as he desperately fights to keep hold. Hands full of equipment, the other miners are helpless to assist. But he’s got it under control, he almost has her. He’s just got to hang on long enough to give her one good pull…
Every muscle in his body screaming, he hoists Sethi up. For just a moment, with their bare skin touching, he can sense her body like it’s his own. He feels her get a foot back on the ledge, senses the adrenaline rushing through her, and marvels jealously at the control she’s still exercising over her body in spite of it.
It’s just for a split second. Because in that same instant, the ground under his feet collapses. Sweat-slick fingers slip loose, the guideline twangs out of his hand, and Jensen goes tumbling into the pit.
He hits the ground with a thud that knocks the wind out of him. For a moment his vision goes black. Through the ringing in his ears, he can barely hear the crew shouting down at him.
Don’t panic. Remember his safety training. Relax, wait for his lungs to inflate. One step at a time.
He reaches out slowly to feel around. His hand meets something cool, hard, and glass-smooth. Carefully, he works his way down the curve of the rigid surface. His fingers meet a lip at the edge, and probe beneath it to find something softer. It feels strange, fibrous and warm.
Suddenly it twitches under his touch. The moment it does, a single thought lights up his mind like an electric shock:
WANT.
He snatches his hand away. Just then, the lights flicker back on. As he sees where he is, his heart freezes in his chest.
He’s not lying on the ground. He’s landed right in the middle of the alien creature’s underbelly. He’s sprawled across one giant plate of its segmented abdomen. With a shudder, he realizes that his hand must have slid right beneath its chitinous shell and touched the inner musculature as he’d fumbled around blindly.
It’s coiled loosely beneath him, like some kind of centipede, but now that he’s up close he can see the rest of its massive body. Glossy segments of chitin easily fill half the mine shaft, terminating in a tail-like structure that forks into two twitching organs that undulate with lithe muscularity. The spiraling segments grow nearly four feet wide higher up its body, where a web of thick, ropey tendons connects them to a looming thorax.
Or is that its head? Does it even HAVE a head? There’s the limbs he could see from above, gripping the mineshaft walls with razor-tipped claws. Six probosces form a swaying halo, each one of them thick as his forearm and dripping down their length with thick mucous. The bulk of its body melts into the shadows, but he can see the contours of four feathery pedipalps, folded protectively around a gently pulsing orifice ringed with layers and layers of sharp, menacing teeth.
And there it is again: that piercing, single-minded thought.
WANT.
Fear freezes him in place. Can it see him? Does it even have eyes? Maybe if he stays perfectly still…
He watches, paralyzed, as dozens of spindly legs unfold from the crevices of the chitin shell where he lays. They arc up across its belly, loosely encircling him in a spidery cage. He doesn’t dare to breathe. His nerves are wound like a violin, every muscle clenched, his heart pumping like it wants to break out of his ribcage. His fingers are going numb but he’s feeling every heartbeat throb from his gut to his groin.
Then the web of legs contracts and clutches him tight to its underside just as the coiled abdomen unfurls. He barely has time to scream before it’s skittering off down the mine shaft with him in tow, the cries of his crewmates echoing behind them.
In moments he’s plunged into utter darkness. His heart drops out of his stomach as he feels them briefly go airborne. There’s a jolt and the clench of legs clutching him tighter, and then the chittering of uncounted armored legs whisking him deeper into the mine shaft.
All the while, its one thought throbs through his brain with building intensity.
WANT. WANT. WANT.
Then suddenly the helter-skelter dash through the mineshaft comes to a halt. Almost gently, he finds himself lowered to the ground. His first instinct is to collapse into the fetal position. His breath comes in short gasps and his limbs tremble.
In the pitch black, he hears it scrape against the raw stone from every direction. It’s all around him. But it’s not touching him. He clenches his jaw and forces himself to take deep breaths.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
His jaw slowly relaxes. His fists unclench. Then he feels its thoughts again. But now, it’s softer. Almost meek. And it’s a question.
want?
He flinches at the brush of something soft and feathery against his face. The touch vanishes again instantly.
Fear is still there, churning at his gut. But now that its voice isn’t howling, he can feel a spark of sentience in the creature’s mind. Alien, yes. But not incomprehensible.
Jensen draws in a slow, steadying breath. This time, when the feathery touch returns, he doesn’t recoil. But he can’t help but shiver as it explores his face. It traces the curve of his jaw, folds around his ear, delves through his loose-trimmed hair and caresses his head. When it probes at his eyes and he reflexively jerks back, it immediately pauses. It resumes tracing his features, gently avoiding his eyes.
Gradually, he begins to lower his guard. In the pitch black, he can only imagine what part of its insectoid form is stroking his face. One of those spidery legs?
It goes on slowly, tenderly. It caresses where he allows it, retreating when he flinches, building trust between them one touch at a time. When the tendril brushes his lips, he feels a thrill run through him. It might be fear. It might be something else. His lips part, and now he’s trembling again as, blind and alone and excruciatingly vulnerable, he feels it slips inside his mouth.
The appendage probes him slowly. Carefully. And very, very thoroughly. The stalk is thin and hard against his lips, but it terminates in some kind of fleshy pad coated in sensory fibers. He feels cilia ripple against the roof of his mouth. It folds around his tongue, and when he pushes back against it and it thrusts back firmly in response, he feels a throb of heat in his gut.
A second appendage joins in to stroke the back of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine. Then a third, and a fourth, and now he’s lost count of how many unseen fingers are probing at him. They tease at his body, stroking over his jumpsuit, nudging under the seams where skin meets fabric.
He’s struck with the sudden realization that this is how he’d unintentionally greeted it earlier. He’d groped over its outer shell till his hands found its soft insides and he’d plunged right in. Maybe it’s just responding in kind.
Again its mind touches his. It pulses with an urgent, needy question. There’s still a knot of fear in his stomach, but now it’s joined by a tight, low heat. He knows what it wants. Then one of those spidery legs draws one long stroke between his legs from his naval to his tailbone, and he knows he wants it too.
The appendage at his mouth has retreated. He takes the opportunity to steady himself with another deep breath. He’s not sure how to tell the creature that it can have what it’s asking for. Mind-reading only works one direction. He just has to trust that it can read his body language.
Slowly, he uncurls, pushes himself to his hands and knees. The probing stalks shrink back at first. But then they quickly return. Now that he’s no longer hunched in on himself, they’re picking eagerly at the front of his jumpsuit. But it’s quickly becoming clear that the creature doesn’t know the difference between clothing and skin.
Heart pounding, he reaches for the zipper of his jumpsuit to show it.
Spindly legs slide under the fabric. He can tell the exact moment when it understands. In an instant a dozen legs plunge beneath his clothing and peel it away, and the echo in his mind shifts to a tone of delight:
HAVE.
His breath comes short and fast. He’s throbbing, nerves coming alive with the thrill of its unfettered desire, and he finds that he wants it in return. When he helps it strip off his boxers and fling them aside, they’re already soaking wet.
Now that he’s not huddled on the ground, he realizes it’s not as pitch dark as he thought. A faint green glow rims the outline of the creature. With a shiver, he sees the things caressing him are the myriad spidery legs that had clutched him to its underside to carry him here.
He looks up at the looming carapace of its thorax, with its razor-sharp claws, its yawning sphincter, and its halo of sinuous tentacles. Spidery fingers still caress him eagerly. They’ve found his cunt, and now they’re hungrily exploring his folds, cilia stoking a mounting heat in his swollen little cock. But now that he can see it, he wants more.
His hands are trembling just a little as he reaches out to pull himself up its belly. The chitin plate is cool and smooth to the touch, and he can’t resist straddling it. The slick glide beneath him when he rolls his hips sends a tremor through his whole body. But he’s sure the alien can’t feel through its armor. And that’s not what he wants. He wants it to feel this too.
He loses track of time as the pair of them slowly negotiate each other’s unfamiliar bodies. It’s not shy about racing its myriad legs across every inch of his skin, or delving into any hole it finds. But it’s sensitive to his reactions. Once he realizes that it can tell when it’s hurt him, and that it’s doing its best to avoid it, he starts to relax, and trust its intentions, and patiently teach it.
He works just as hard to learn its body in return. The tail alone is nearly twenty feet long, the broader thorax another ten. So he starts at the tip of the tail, where it splits into two prehensile stalks and the spidery legs grow wispy and thin, and works his way up. He runs his hands over one segment after another, finding the cracks in its armor, sliding his hands inside to stroke the ropey connective tissue. By the time he reaches the alien’s thorax, the segments are so massive that he’s using his whole body to arch into it.
The creature’s mind is a hum of slow-burning bliss. Some part of its body emits a rapid chittering sound, and Jensen suddenly has to clutch at its carapace for a handhold as it uncoils from end to end to lay on its back. He needn’t have worried: dozens of legs wrap around him tenderly and clasp him close.
HAVE, echoes its mind through his.
He breathes into its embrace, two dozen legs rippling up and down his spine. It’s a thrill that sends a pulse of heat to his cock, equal parts instinctive fear and primal lust. With a moan, he arches his back, splays his legs, searches for more.
What meets his rutting hips now isn’t the thin, willowy legs. It’s two of its thick, mucous-slick proboscises. They coil around his thighs, grip him tight, and urge him towards its twitching maw.
He’s struck by a flash of doubt. He thought he knew what it wanted. But does he, really? There’s that massive sphincter, with its rows of teeth, and two sinewy tendrils pushing him forward, and four pedipalps quivering with anticipation. Fear returns, sharp as before, as he crawls haltingly up its underbelly.
One proboscis glides between his thighs and strokes at his cunt. He staggers, gasping. Fear only makes his nerves throb hotter where its slick muscle meets his aching cock. It’s thrusting into him now, and the second proboscis presses insistently at his asshole, and half of him wants to scream and flail and run, and the other half want to die speared on its tongues.
He could try to beg it to stop. But he doesn’t. It keeps thrusting, pushing, nudging him ahead, and he spreads his legs wider to let it in as deep as he can take it. He’s just inches from the ravenous maw, the grasping pedipalps, and a scream rises in his throat as his muscles stretch and burn and his legs give out beneath him and he collapses into the maw, and–
–and it’s soft. What he’d thought were teeth give way beneath his hands. They’re warm. Velvety. And at his touch, he hears the creature’s thoughts emit a psychic keen of ecstasy so intense it pushes him over the edge into a shuddering orgasm.
He’s barely through the aftershocks and he’s already riding on the edge of pleasure again. It’s in his mind. It’s filled his cunt. It’s so deep inside his guts he can feel it every time he breathes. And he’s inside it, writhing against its eager orifice, sinking his arm into it shoulder-deep and fucking it with his whole body.
For one incandescent minute, he feels its thoughts like they’re his own. He drags his hand through the fluttering velvet pseudoteeth. He feels his proboscises curl with ecstasy into the tight heat of his own guts. His thighs tremble uncontrollably in response. He clutches himself in the grip of his pedipalps and pulls himself deeper in a blinding feedback loop. Its pleasure is his, and he gives his whole body over to writhing against it, inside and out, thrusting and stroking and driving them both to a shuddering peak. He has one thousand and two legs and they all convulse in unison.
It takes them both a while before they stir again. Jensen almost falls over when he tries to sit up and forgets that he only has the two feet. Now that he’s back in his own head, he’s pretty sure he’s pulled something in his shoulder, too. With sinking dread, he remembers that he’s lost and cut off from his crew. And the cutting laser chassis is still at the bottom of the shaft.
Hm. Well. Maybe there was one option. It might take some explaining, but… He’d had good luck communicating with the alien so far. He might as well give it a try.
It does indeed take some explaining when the thirty-foot long insectoid alien comes skittering up the mine shaft, gently deposits both him and the laser chassis at the Crew Chief’s feet, and then skitters right back away again. He tells the truth. They don’t believe him. But they never complain about having a psychic on staff again.