2 actives bookending a 3rd issue

[rubes]

I am trying to set up a game enemy that would consist of a left side, a right side, and a lightsaber beam between the two actives, which will look roughly like this >-<
I have tried a bunch of things and messed up what i had working that was better, but didn't save along the way (d'Oh!). Here's what I'm trying to accomplish:

If > or < are destroyed, the beam - should become invisible
If both > and < are destroyed, the beam should be destroyed as well

Right now, when > or < is destroyed, all -'s are hidden or destroyed, i cant tell.
I've attached where I am now, but this is pretty ugly. I'm using the beam's alterable values for x & y that are being used by > and <

The player ship is spaceship controls, space to shoot, and z creates a new set of >-< actives.

Once this i understand how to do this, i may have the desire to resize the active beam, so that the two end points could be closer or further apart, but i dont see how to do that. My initial thought is to have a resized beam through animation frames, and i would keep track of the distance needed between the > and < based on frame number.