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

kissing her on the nose, the chin, the jaw, the neck. Lisa’s pleasure mingles with her worry; her love for this silly and lighthearted Angel Perez swirls with her fear that he will return from the Asteroid Belt a different man — or not return at all.

~~~

Clown yelps and curses. A glob of white acid bubbles on the back of his suit. Stomper tears an aluminum can from the pack on his hip, rips it open, and sprays neutralizer over the acid. For a stretched-out time, the acid gnaws into the protective lining, but the spray takes effect, and the bubbling stops.

“Systems check!” Clown screams, and two seconds later Queen Bee replies, “You’re clear. No leaks.”

“Where’s the Spitter?” asks Zappy.

“Nest, fifty meters to the right,” says Splash. “Incoming!”

Globules of white, viscous acid come lobbing in from a rocky outcropping. The squad scatters, and the acid floats past. The Spitters are neon tubes protruding from the rock. They swell, then spit more acid, like cartoon blunderbusses. Clown and Zappy crouch and aim their EP-19s, firing pulse after pulse at the nest. Stomper and Custer swoop in, swinging blades. Like scythes, the J-4s slice through the Spitters. The foamy tubes drift upward, becoming debris in the Belt. Stomper’s arms and shoulders and back work fast, slashing and swinging. His body feels electrified, rushing. When the Spitters are dead, Stomper drops a detonating charge on the nest. Rock blasts away, exposing a chute below. The squad rushes in.

Clearing the Spitters leaves Stomper sluggish, weak, and thirsty. “Boost me!” he shouts to Queen Bee, whose signal sends the needle back into Stomper’s arm. The amphetamine rush lifts him, and he screams down the chute, stabbing everything inhuman that moves, hacking at Wasps and Spitters. Boots pound the rock as the squad uses magnets, gravity and muscle to navigate. Hearts beat insanely, pumping blood to muscles working too fast to ache. Like ichor-stained knights of old, the acid and fluid-spattered squad from Endless Power charges into the depths of C13398. After seven months of training and service together, the quintet butchers Wasps and Spitters with hyper-efficiency. Always, they watch for Mantises. More machine than organism, Mantises are supposed to be death walking on jagged joints. Better to see them before they see you. But they find no Mantises.

Nucleite crystals glow like dew in moonlight. Splash reports to Queen Bee, who congratulates them and orders them to clean up. He sends boost signals to all five men, who wince at the pricks of needles inside their suits. In cleanup, speed is critical. If one organism were to survive and reproduce, when the harvesting teams came to C13398, they would be swarmed by hundreds of new, angry Wasps. The men hack the Wasp and Spitter bodies, probing every surface with maniacal efficiency. Stomper’s dilated eyes flash at every movement, seeing Wasps and Spitters everywhere. They have never seen a Mantis. At the surface, all is still, and Splash calls to Queen Bee.

“C13398 clear.Ready for evac.”

“Copy, Splash,” says Queen Bee, and the men hear the smile in his voice. “Prepare for—”

Clown screams and the men whip around. A Wasp clings to Clown’s back. Its stinger has thrust through the suit and shattered the polarized visor. Blood oozes and hangs in the air. Zappy fires a pulse that hits Clown, spinning him end over end. Custer lunges out and grabs Clown’s leg. Stomper slashes his J-4 at the Wasp, chopping through the armored body. He hacks again and again, his limbs supercharged, and Splash pulls him back. Clown’s lower body lies on the rock; the upper half is a grisly, spattered mess.

“I’m sorry!” Stomper screams at no one. “It was a Wasp! I had to—”

“It’s cool, man. It’s cool,” Splash says. “Clown was dead. You had to.”

Splash reports to Queen Bee, who orders the evac vessel to pick up the squad and Clown’s corpse.

For three hours Stomper feels no emotions, only the momentum of the amphetamines. Once the drugs drain from him, though, and he realizes what he has done to the body of his friend, he sobs and shakes. Queen Bee places a hand on his shoulder, tells him not to worry, that he was doing his job. The consolation does not help. Stomper feels older, harder, emptier. The hollowness comes from the broken promise of adventure — the knowledge that he was racing along the vital edge of some frontier.

~~~

Angel stands among rows of cultivated nucleite on Mars. Eighteen months have passed since Endless Power released him from active scouring duty. In his hand, a monitor counts the ever-growing crystals and transmits data to the Endless Power satellite. Researchers discovered years ago that nucleite self-replicates when “planted” on barren rock. The first nucleite “farmers” on Mars joked that it was an easier crop to raise than dandelions.

Angel stares ahead, focusing on nothing. Under his pressurized atmosphere suit, he wears a collared shirt and the silk tie Lisa bought him before they moved to Mars. Clown is dead. So are Custer and Splash. Zappy lives in the Mars colony, but never speaks with Angel. Queen Bee still coordinates scour missions.

Angel has still to see a Mantis, but he knows the stories of how they can eviscerate a man with a single stroke. In his dreams, it’s a Mantis’ metallic claws that hack Clown into pieces. And sometimes, alone in the nucleite fields, he sees Mantises crouched low among the crystals, their polygonal carapaces camouflaged among the jutting angles of glittering crystal. His heart thumps and rises and the twitch in his legs explodes and he is running, running down the rows to get away until he realizes he is quite alone, that the Mantises are far away in the Belt and not on quiet Mars. Quiet, cold Mars, whose centuries-old mystique has withered into red, dusty, sterile disappointment.

Mars reminds Angel of Little League, before the Energy Wars. His coach would push the chalk spreader that draws white lines from home plate to the outfield wall. At game’s start,