Грегори Бенфорд - Not One of Us - Stories of Aliens on Earth

“We’ll see.” A bloom of mildew-pink within his cap betrays irritation. “We are falling behind the other teams.”

The others are probably doing cursory checks. Plenty of squid are fed up with being unable to tell Fiends from allies. If a few stubborn humans get dusted with their houses, they probably figure it’s a bonus. Loot’s more conscientious… and his family connections mean he can get away with it.

Now the woman bellows in sudden rage, glaring past my legs at a squid I’ve dubbed Gollum. He’s lingering over the trussed-up son, poking a tentacle into the boy’s mouth, getting a taste of him.

I vault over her, shoving the offworlder’s carapace. “Cut it out.”

Loot kills the fight before it can begin, bringing Gollum to heel. Then he orders Squiggly to haul the prisoners back to the evacuation team, effectively reducing our strength by ten percent. More, really—Squiggly’s worth three of Gollum.

“Your son’ll be okay,” I tell the woman. “I can see he’s breathing.”

Her reply doesn’t require translation; every squid in California knows “Fuck you, traitor,” when they hear it. I let the words glide over my skin, light as the rush of sweat raining down my face.

“Building is empty,” Loot reports. We pull out, and the floater drifts in to demolish the low-rise.

“The strip mall next?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says, and we move out. “Tell me something, Cantil?”

“Sure.”

“This city lies on a major fault line, does it not? Wouldn’t it make sense to take the population inland?”

“You saying your fancy nano-built condos can’t handle the occasional earthquake, Lieutenant?”

Gollum smacks me, accidentally-on-purpose, for dissing Kabuva architecture. Loot flicks him back into line.

“Of course they can. But if the land’s unstable—”

“You can’t just uproot all of L.A.”

“You could build somewhere tectonically stable—house everyone in a tenth of the land area,” throws in Bluto.

It’s a fight not to sigh. You wouldn’t believe how offworlders can go on and fucking on about urban sprawl. “People like to live near the beach.”

That gets a ripple of amusement from the platoon. As far as these guys are concerned, humans can’t swim. Take a squid to a dive shop, he’d probably laugh himself into a stroke.

Mmmm, interesting thought. I file it away, cracking out a fresh stick of gum before I close up my mask.

At the strip mall we check a liquor store and a magazine shop. Both are empty, eminently dustable. Troops poke into a third, bored. All routine until there’s a flash and a series of whumps—modified car airbags, from the sound. Three squid race out of the shop. A black cloud follows: toner from photocopiers, almost certainly. The stuff gets everywhere, burns their skin, infiltrates their delicate gills.

“Why didn’t you say there was a print shop?” Loot, furious, hitches two tentacles into my armpits and takes a full taste of me.

“I didn’t know!” My pulse goes haywire as he hoists me to my tiptoes. “It says Office Furnishings.”

He runs a tentacle around my forearm, checking blood pressure, suspicious. I wait, chewing my gum furiously and trying to get my breath under control. When they’re calm they’re decent lie detectors, but you never know when a squid might decide you’re stringing him along, not because you are but just because he’s upset.

Calm. Focus on concrete things. I watch the remainder of the squad heading back into the shop. They come out a minute later carrying what’s left of Harpo, webbing up the dead fry in grim silence. My runaway heart slows as the wounded lift him gently and start limping to the rear.

“Down to half strength now,” Kramer grumbles.

“Pull back.” Loot still hasn’t let go. “We’ll dust the retail block.”

Bluto asks: “We’re moving on to the single-family dwellings?”

“Perhaps.” He shakes me. “Are there signs, Cantil? What do they say?”

“People don’t put signs on their houses. Numbers, names, sometimes, but—” I glance ahead. The other squads’ demolition ships are fifteen to twenty blocks ahead of us.

“What about that?” He unfurls an anger-white tentacle, pointing. Definitely worked up now, not so keen to believe the copy shop thing’s not my fault.

I swallow. “It’s an old ‘For Sale’ sign—the owners tried to sell the house.”

“And that?”

“Beware of dog,” I translate. “Look, pick any house. Any street. I’ll go in first.”

“And lead us into a trap?”

“You’ve seen my file, Loot.” I press my face mask against his armor, glaring into his cap. Sweat flows off me, soaking the sticky tentacles holding me up. “You know I hate everything Fiendish.”

Gollum scoffs. “Easy to say.”

“You want me to take point? I’ll take point. Fuck, you can take my vest off. Pick the house, Loot, send me in.”

No response. I let fury take over, popping catches on my protective vest. “I’ll go naked, how’s that?”

“Wait.” Finally releasing me, Loot knots a couple tentacles in a ritual gesture of apology and presses them against my shoulder.

“Cantil in front works for me,” Gollum snarls.

Ignoring him, Loot says: “Let’s move on.”

Five houses into the next block, we find a family chained to the pipes in their basement.

There are four of them: mama, papa, grandma, and a daughter who’s maybe twelve. They’re white, old Euro from the looks of them. This probably isn’t the first time they’ve been displaced.

The old woman shrieks in a foreign tongue.

“What is she saying?”

“Not sure—I think they might be Greek.”

“You don’t speak Greek?” Bluto asks accusingly. As if, you know, I’m a moron.

“American, Spanish, Mandarin, French, and Kabuva.”

This gets me the usual response. “But Greek’s just another Euro dialect, isn’t it?”

Sighing, I try the girl. “Come on, honey, you must’ve been born here. Speak American? ¿Habla Español?”

She does a burrow into Mama’s leg.

“We’ll cut them free,” decides Loot. “Apply taser patches.” Gollum gleefully presses the patches against the back of each human’s neck.

“One wrong move, we zap you into a coma,” he warns. I make gestures, trying to get the idea across via charades. Granny waves her evil-eye pendant oh so theatrically. The squid, forced to crowd together in the low-ceilinged basement, are nevertheless relaxing their guard. It’s cooler out here than in the sun.

Only Loot remains sharp.

Toady shoves Papa away from the end of the pipe, brandishing a mini-saw. Meanwhile, Bluto unrolls the first body restraint, his tentacles roiling fluidly as he flaps the net out like a rug.

The mini-saw bites into the pipe, sending up a stream of sparks. The whole family starts wailing and shrieking; you’d think they were being murdered.

Loot turns to me in exasperation.

“Sorry,” I say. “It’s all Greek to me.”

Just then Toady’s saw breaks through the pipes. Gas belches out. Loot reacts quickly, jerking Bluto and Gollum away from the billow of white fog.

The gas is high-end stuff, no improvised booby trap this time. Toady and Kramer collapse like punctured balloons. Granny and the girl fall atop them as Loot hits the tasers.