Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever by Phoenix Sullivan (bill gates book recommendations TXT) 📗

Filling oneself with the poison of killing. He wonders if killing humans becomes easier with each kill. Cross that line enough, he tells himself, and it disappears. The line between life and death, right and wrong, not killing and killing — like those chalk lines on the Little League field. Step on the line enough and it gets smudged out. The line between killing space creatures and killing humans. Stomper thinks that is a line better left uncrossed.

Three Wasps pounce on Custer, jabbing spikes through his armored suit. The man thrashes before going still. Lizard fires his EP-19, and one energy pulse knocks a Wasp against the rock. Stomper propels himself into the fray. Holding out the blade, he pierces the carapace of one Wasp. Zappy snatches Custer’s J-4 blade and hacks at another. Wasps swarm out of the tunnels into the cavern. Splash screams into his com for support, though reinforcements are hours or days away. The men scream and pounce, crushing and stabbing everything that moves. A needle prick in Stomper’s arm makes him pant and sweat. Weightless, he is pure energy, invincible. He smashes and splinters the Wasps, the fragments of their bodies going slippery with slime. Any emotional reaction to Custer’s death is incinerated in the amphetamine fire running through his veins. Stomper feels as alive as is possible. Not good, not excited, but raw and alive.

When it is dark and quiet again, the men lie on the cold rock like limp fish. Stomper does not know if he is awake and trying to fall asleep, or asleep and dreaming of being awake. In that sleep fog, he sees another Wasp, jolts awake and chops it into slime and shell.

Then Splash shakes him awake. “Mantis,” the leader whispers, and Stomper is awake and sharp again. The four men make their way further into S093, burrowing into the darkest depths of the space rock. They see nothing, but the needle jabs into Stomper’s arm, and he feels sparks running through his veins. Something moves in the dark ahead. It is a Mantis; Stomper is sure of it.

Then Splash shakes him awake again, and he stares in disbelief at everything.

~~~

Splash and Lizard step on a nest of Spitters, and the acid bores through their suits faster than Zappy and Stomper can react. The men spasm like hooked fish, then go still, and their bodies float in the vacuum. Stomper screams through his com to Queen Bee, safe in the distant, orbiting command station, “Evac! Evac! Evac!”

Then he cries.

~~~

Angel packs his few belongings because Lisa told him to leave the EnviroDome 4002. He feels no emotion; he thinks only of escaping the artificial bubble. He listens to an audionews broadcast from Mars’ single station.

Reports from Endless Power, Inc. indicate that larval Wasps, and worse, may have been transported to the nucleite farms on Mars. An infestation could ruin the corporation’s investments. For more on this we—

Angel contacts Endless Power headquarters. He speaks with an operator and volunteers to scour the nucleite farms. She asks his name, which he provides.

“Mr. Perez,” the operator replies, “you have an exemplary record of service with our company, and your eighteen months of scouring in the Belt already exceeds our maximum recommended—”

“Please,” Angel begs. “Give me a J-4. I can jump, I can attack, I can slay—”

“Let me transfer you,” the operator says, and Angel disconnects. He wonders if this is how a knight of old found his way into knight errancy — when the knight’s need to serve outlived the king’s need of his service.

~~~

Angel looks out at the nucleite, replicating itself in rows. The crystals jut up from the rock, promising profit and power. Endless power, Angel thinks, but for whom? What does mankind do with endless power and no boundaries? It comes to Angel that Endless Power has been harvesting nucleite, but the harvest has been fueled with another unlimited resource: young men, and the reckless, undirected enthusiasm that defines them. Like the Spitters that consume nucleite, which is filled with potential energy, and spit out acid, Endless Power consumes promising men — and Angel realizes now that he is the waste product.

Something moves. A Mantis. Angel knows it. Polygons on polygons, grinding against one another, swiveling with machine speed. Angel’s heart thumps in his chest. He places Zappy’s vial of amph solution in the medical access slot of his suit. A syringe stabs into his scarred arm. In seconds the rush returns. A Mantis for certain.

Angel scrambles into his transport and slams the accelerator, spinning the tires and clawing through the nucleite fields. Crystals shatter and smash to powder as Angel screams, feeling alive. The Mantis looks up, sees the vehicle and turns. Its mechanical-looking legs propel it toward the colony. Angel speeds up and screams. Spittle flies from his lips and his bleary eyes dilate.

Though it is twice as large as the transport, Angel thinks only to knock the monster over then smash it under the tires. But he cannot reach the Mantis, which bounds toward the distant dome houses, toward the EnviroDome 4002 where Lisa still lives. In an instant, Angel crosses over the boundary between the colony and the wild Martian plain, crosses into his neighborhood, crushes the white plastic picket fence on his property, and smashes into the EnviroDome 4002. He hurtles through the windshield, smashes into a table and dies.

Stomper leaps up, clutching a fragment of the polycarbonate windshield. The Mantis tromps across the living room, lunging toward Lisa, who is screaming. Darren stands by her side. Darren, Queen Bee, who never felt danger from his distant, orbiting command station, who has treated Angel with cordiality and nothing more since the Belt, who has been comforting Lisa over cups of coffee and under silk sheets. Stomper leaps, raising his polycarbonate longsword and swinging it down onto Darren. The man crumples, and Stomper stabs and stabs, feeling weightless, obliterating. Stomper keels backward as Lisa strikes him with a dish. Stunned, he looks up. Why did she