Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever by Phoenix Sullivan (easy readers txt) 📕

of rock, the scouring team careens over the asteroid’s surface, moving and thinking as one.

~~~

Angel Perez stands shirtless on the volleyball court, laughing, a can of beer in one hand. He and his friends, all young men in their early twenties, play without strain, letting the ball drop often. In two weeks they will report to the Endless Power training facility before deploying to the Asteroid Belt. In seven months, Angel, who will then be called Stomper, will stand on C13398. Now, charcoal heats on nearby grills. Local kids run and yell through the city park, drawing the scorn of many, but not the six men. The heat and beer make them sloppy and cheerful.

“C’mon, serve,” says Darren, flipping the ball to Angel, his best friend. As Queen Bee, Darren will coordinate attacks from the distant command station because a heart murmur exempts him from scouring duty. The ball bounces off Angel’s thin chest. He curses, but he’s laughing. Not letting go of the beer can, he stoops and picks up the ball with his free hand, tosses it in the air, and smacks it into play.

The park and surrounding cityscape have changed a lot in a decade. Because of the Energy Wars, the men did not play there as boys. Strict energy quotas meant most civilians spent very little time indoors and milled about the city from dawn until dusk. Mobs with short tempers collected in open areas, such as parks. While civilians wandered the cities, soldiers and mercenaries fought over the remaining drops of oil and gas in remote corners of the world. Angel’s father had died defending a derrick in Alaska. Chinese mercenaries overran his platoon and claimed the oil, which ran dry in a week. Angel had been too young to know him, but imagined his father as a valiant crusader in a hopeless crusade.

Escalating violence had not ended the Energy Wars; the discovery of nucleite had.

“Scared?” Darren throws the question out to no one in particular. Scoffs and macho denials pepper the air.

The man who will later be called Splash swigs his beer and taps the ball over the net. “No more scared than I get weeding the garden or setting mousetraps.”

“It’s gonna be dangerous.” Some of the men feel a tweak of resentment when Darren says this.

“I’m not scared. You scared, babe?” Angel calls to Lisa, who sits in the shade, reading. She lays her book in the grass and strolls to the court. Her long black legs move smoothly in denim shorts, and Angel is proud when his buddies sneak glances at her.

“Hmm?” she purrs, putting her arms around Angel’s waist.

“You scared for me?”

Her four-second pause is answer enough. “Well … I’ve heard about the Belt. Accidents.Debris.Oxygen. Wasps, Spitters and who knows what else. I mean, one pinhole in those suits and—”

Darren chuckles. “Chicks,” he says. Lisa glares over the rims of her sunglasses.

The ball rolls to Angel’s feet. Lisa elbows him and he scoops up the ball and hurls it at Darren, beer can still firmly in hand.

“What about the amph solutions?” Lisa asks. “I hear it’s hard to stop. I hear you hallucinate and your heart can burst.”

“Don’t worry, babe,” Angel says. “Endless Power sets it all up. After active duty, they terrace down our dosage until we’re clean. All safe. It’s all there in the manual.”

The 388-page manual from Endless Power is titled A Guide for Tomorrow’s Pioneers. The cover shows a firm-jawed young man and woman, superimposed over stars and nebulae, staring into the distance. Angel has only read the first three paragraphs:

You are a young person with courage. With character.With a hunger for adventure. We know this because you have signed with Endless Power, Inc. Your contract opens not a world but a galaxy of opportunity. You will tread ground untouched before by any human. Your excitement and fear are the same feelings shared by other explorers: Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, the crews of the Apollo missions.

Wood.Oil.Water.Coal.The sun.The atom. Of the many energy sources to fuel mankind’s progress, none has changed us the way nucleite has. Since its accidental discovery by the space probe Providence, our newest element has astounded physicists. Held in the hand, a nucleite crystal is no more harmful than quartz, can be split and transported with ease, and is capable of rapid self-replication. And yet a single, pencil-sized crystal of nucleite can produce a cold-fusion reaction powerful enough to power the city of New York for several hours or propel a five-man spacecraft to Pluto. While traditional cold-fusion reactions require large inputs of energy to overcome the Coulomb Barrier, nucleite seems almost eager to react for us. When the Energy Wars reached a crisis point, science pointed us to nucleite.

Endless Power is at the forefront of exploration, research, harvesting, and development of nucleite, rapidly converting old fossil-fuel and nuclear power stations to nucleite reactors. In the near future, everything from flashlights to space stations will be powered with nucleite batteries. You and your fellow team members are the brave pioneers who will blaze mankind’s trail across the Solar System. Exterminating the pests that infest nucleite deposits is the first crucial step in harnessing this revolutionary energy.

The manual sits under a bottle of sunblock. Angel knows he must read it before he reports to training in two weeks, but right now he and the other men would rather play volleyball and drink beer.

“You worry too much,” Darren tells Lisa. She folds her arms over her chest.

“Get him,” she says, and Angel drops his beer can. He charges Darren and tackles him. All the men laugh and kick sand at the wrestling pair. Angel stands, brushes off, and strides over to Lisa. Wrapping his arms around her waist and slinging her over his shoulders, he trudges off to the shade where they kiss.

“Promise me,” she whispers, her lips brushing his cheek and ear, “Promise that after you’ve done this job, we can get a nice house and live a normal life.”

“Promise,” whispers Angel,