On an asteroid far from any life, three starat slaves mine for precious minerals. Even in the isolation of space, they can find beauty.

Today’s story is the first of two parts of “Lights In The Sky” by J.F.R. Coates, the author of dragons and magic with his Destiny of Dragons series, and of starats and space popes in the Reborn series. You can follow him on Twitter at @jfrcoates for occasional writing nonsense.

Read for you by Khaki, your faithful fireside companion.

You’re listening to The Voice of Dog. I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

and Today’s story is the first of two parts of

“Lights In The Sky”

by J.F.R. Coates, the author of dragons and magic with his

Destiny of Dragons series,

and of starats and space popes

in the Reborn series.

You can follow him on Twitter

at @jfrcoates for occasional writing nonsense.

“Lights In The Sky”

by J.F.R. Coates, Part 1 of 2

The Asteroid Belt was a cold, dark place.

But more than that, it was isolated.

Each small chunk of rock

slowly orbited Sol on its own.

Only very rarely was a rock close enough to another

that they were visible from each other.

Usually there was nothing but an endless black sky

filled with thousands of stars.

Even the closest star,

Sol, did little but burn the eyes of those who looked towards it without their visors down. 2557RA3 was no different to most asteroids.

It was small, only a few kilometres across,

and shaped roughly like a peanut.

The asteroid spun quickly as it orbited Sol,

about halfway between Mars and Jupiter,

thousands of miles from

anything else of note in the belt.

It also had a landing craft on its surface.

A sleek, bright ship was precariously perched on the tiny rock.

Big red letters were emblazoned on the side of the craft. ‘Masterson

Minerals’.

A large silo had been constructed

on one of the few smooth regions of the asteroid.

To its side was a small hut

that would be the shelter for the miners

that would be taking residence on their lonely rock.

Both structures gleamed

in the bright, pure light from Sol.

Once the structures were complete,

the ship departed from the asteroid.

It wasn’t long before it was just a tiny

pinprick of light

amongst a field of thousands of over

small, white lights.

The three starats left behind on the surface of the asteroid

knew it would be the last contact they’d have for a very long time.

They stared up into the dark sky

until they had lost sight of the ship entirely.

The starat on the right of the trio turned to face his companions.

Their thick, clumsy spacesuits

made it hard to tell each other apart,

and Leandro couldn’t tell which of the two was Christie

and which was Ellen.

“Well, we are here for three months.

Shall we see what toys they have given us,”

Leandro said. He had to hold his hand to the side of his helmet to talk.

There was a button

which activated the speakers to communicate with the other two headsets,

or else any sound they made would be lost to the vacuum that surrounded them.

“Bet you one meal that it’s rusted crap that barely works,”

the starat in the middle said.

Leandro recognised Christie’s voice.

No one took up Christie’s bet,

though Leandro doubted they would have been given anything of particular quality.

The humans wouldn’t give starats the best materials.

Leandro muttered a few choice words

in the silence of his helmet

as he carefully made his way across the surface of the asteroid.

The three walked hand in hand;

a promise they had made to each other to do until they had

hammered in the tether lines that would keep them more secure to the small rock.

The silo had looked huge when it had been installed,

but as the three starats approached it

they truly got a sense of its sheer scale.

It was gigantic, taller than some skyscrapers on Terra.

“We’re going to have to hollow out this rock if we want to fill that,”

Ellen said. She slapped her hand against the side of the gigantic structure.

Leandro could feel the vibrations through their interlinked arms,

but it was eerie that he couldn’t actually hear the impact.

“We have three months for it,”

Leandro replied. They lingered for a few moments longer,

their necks craned as they looked up towards the distant top of the silo,

before they slowly moved around to their accommodation.

It looked tiny in comparison.

The small hut was tall enough a human could have stood up in it,

so for a starat it was certainly comfortable.

Solar panels coated the roof,

providing them with the power they’d need to run the few systems they had available to them.

Leandro pulled open the door,

only to find a second, sturdier door within.

“Holy shit, they actually gave us an airlock,”

Ellen crowed in delight.

She slapped Leandro’s shoulder,

and the starat felt his feet lift off the ground in response.

He quickly braced his hands against the door,

gripping onto it with as much force as he could muster through the space suit.

Ellen gently tugged him back down.

“Sorry.” Leandro slowly let out the breath he had been holding.

He could feel the hammering of his heart.

One misstep before they got the tethers down could be fatal.

His hand shook as he fumbled for the button on the side of his helmet.

“We should get inside.”

They could only go through the airlock one at a time,

as it wouldn’t fit any more than that.

The doors were slow,

but when Leandro stepped inside the small room his helmet pinged a notification that he was in a safe breathing environment.

He fumbled around the back of his neck to find the clasps that kept his helmet in place,

before gratefully removing it.

The grey-furred starat shook his head

to loosen up his fur.

He was a weasel-like creature,

covered in a thick layer of fur that was almost pinched and compressed inside suits designed for short humans.

His lone remaining ear had been

constantly crushed down against the top of his skull

inside the ill-fitting helmet,

and he was not looking forward to dealing with that for so long.

Leandro brushed a gloved hand over the grey and black fur of his muzzle

as he looked around the small room.

Three beds lined one wall.

Stacks of dehydrated meals lined the opposite wall.

Other supplies were bundled together at the far end of the room.

Beneath his feet was the bare rock of the asteroid.

An airtight seal was maintained at the base of the structure by a thick layer of a flexible

rubbery material that

Leandro didn’t dare touch,

just in case it compromised its integrity.

Ellen was next to come in.

Seeing Leandro with his helmet off,

she immediately removed hers.

Like Leandro, she rubbed her ears as she held her helmet under her arm.

“Ow, they did not make these suits for starats, did they?”

“My tail is awfully cramped,” Leandro

replied. He gently placed his helmet down on the closest of the beds.

As much as he hated the thing,

he didn’t want to toss it aside as it was the only thing that would keep him alive outside of the tiny room.

“I am not wearing it for three months solid, I can tell you that right now.”

“Typical male. Around two lovely ladies by yourself for three months, and you’re already talking about getting naked,”

Ellen said. She laughed and stuck her tongue out at Leandro’s flustered attempts at responding. “Nah,

I get you. These things are awful.

Keeps riding up into places I do not want it to go.”

Leandro wrinkled up his muzzle and turned to search through some of the provided supplies.

He found the tethers and ropes,

and he could only hope that there was enough to create safe paths across the asteroid.

There was nothing to actually drill for the minerals,

but he assumed that they would be kept within the silo.

The starat held out a couple of packets of dehydrated food.

Within the wrappers, the food looked just like a bar of indistinct brown mush,

but Leandro had survived off similar before.

He had often found it didn’t usually taste terrible.

So long as you forced yourself to forget what food tasted like.

“I shall ration these out properly later,

but why not have a celebratory meal now?

We are here, conditions are... decent.

And then we can get to work later.”

“Sounds delightful,”

Christie replied.

The other starat had removed her helmet as well,

holding it securely beneath her arm.

She twitched her muzzle and stuck her tongue out,

but she still caught the bar as it slowly floated through the air.

Together, the three starats unwrapped their first meal and tentatively bit into the bar at the same time. “Oh that’s brilliant,”

Ellen said, her ears perking up.

She looked around her small group of companions with a grimace across her muzzle.

“I can really taste the cardboard.”

“It is all we have, I fear.

I think they might be all the same flavour too,”

Leandro replied with a laugh.

He ran his gloved hand over the stacks of bars that were piled up along one wall.

Every single one looked identical.

“They have a flavour?”

Christie asked. She sniffed at the bar and shrugged her shoulders.

“Could be worse. They don’t taste bad,

I suppose. But I sure as shit wouldn’t say they have a flavour.”

“At least they remembered to give us food.

I heard there was one mining station set up, and the crew starved after just a couple of days,”

Ellen said. She shuddered as she tried to throw herself down onto the bed.

Instead, she just drifted down slowly and bounced slightly off the mattress.

Leandro placed his hands on his hips

as he looked at the two other starats.

His ears flicked.

“Well, we will not starve.

There is food and water here. We have oxygen for the full three months,

and even a generous couple of days extra.

It may not be comfortable,

but we have all we need right here.”

A genuine smile broke across his muzzle.

“And best yet, we have no humans breathing over our necks.”

“Think they’ll extend my contract here if I ask nicely?”

Ellen asked. She swallowed down another mouthful of her flavourless bar of indeterminate food.

She held the rest of the bar up above her face.

“You know, I think this is really starting to grow on me.” ***

Once they had finished their meals,

the three starats started to prepare their work area for the next three months.

The most important task was to lay down the tethers that would keep them secured to the rock’s surface.

The thick ropes were secured to the silo and housing hut first,

before they were hammered down into the rocky surface of the asteroid.

It was stressful work,

as every time Leandro hammered the pegs down into the rock,

he could feel the momentum threatening to push him up off the surface.

If it wasn’t for Christie and Ellen holding him down,

themselves tethered to the previous section,

then he probably would have drifted away.

Over a few hours,

paths were laid out between the silo, housing, and the first area that had been designated for drilling.

The entire asteroid had been surveyed months earlier,

and all the likely regions for the rich minerals had all been highlighted on the maps provided.

It wasn’t until they drilled into the rock

before they’d know if those surveys had been correct or not. Once the tethers were

laid out, the three starats could walk across the surface

without constantly feeling like they were one trip away from floating into empty space.

Instead they just needed to be careful the hooks were securely fastened to their suits

and to the guiding ropes.

As Leandro had expected,

the mining equipment was all in the silo.

It was all designed to be carried by hand,

with a large wagon that could be pushed to and from the mining sites around the asteroid.

Everything looked

rudimentary, and Leandro knew there was better technology available,

but he had always known that wouldn’t be spared for a simple starat crew.

After several hours of preparation, Leandro was finally confident that everything was ready for use.

The pathways were tethered,

the equipment was installed.

All that was left to do was to begin,

but before they did so, Leandro had them all sit down in the massive silo that would soon,

hopefully, be filled with rich ores and other precious materials.

“I want no one working out there by themselves,” he said.

He remained standing as he slowly paced around the cavernous space.

No matter how far away he walked from them,

or in what direction he was facing,

he knew they would hear him clearly through their helmet speakers.

“But nor do I want all of us out there at the same time.

We’ve been set some pretty optimistic targets in how much minerals we’re to extract,

so we’ll need to be working pretty much constantly.

We shall have five hour shifts,

as our suits can hold six hours of oxygen at a time.

Two shifts on, one shift off.

We can rotate so there’s always one starat at base,

and two mining. Does that sound fair?”

Ellen shrugged her shoulders.

“I can’t think of anything better.

Who gets first rest?”

“You can have first rest,” Leandro replied.

“Then you can, Christie.

I rested on the ship, so I will be fine to work for a while.”

“Sounds fair to me,” Christie said.

She carefully rose to her feet.

Even tethered inside the silo,

none of the starats particularly wanted to feel themselves float off the surface too much.

It was uncomfortable at the best of times.

“Shall we get going then?”

Leandro was the closest to the doors,

so he pushed them open.

The dim light that had been illuminating the silo switched off behind them.

The darkness was never quite total on the asteroid,

as the gleam of the starlight constantly shone down around them.

Even when Sol was hidden,

there was always a small glow around the close horizons.

The glow was particularly strong to one side.

Leandro put out his arms to stop the other two starats from walking past him.

They stopped behind him, and he pressed in the speaker on his helmet.

“Visors on full tint.”

“It’s still dark,” Ellen said.

“Full tint. Trust me,

you’ll want to see this,”

Leandro replied. He pointed towards the brightest point on the horizon

as he darkened his visor.

Everything went almost pitch black,

but for the pinprick of light

as Sol slowly started to emerge from beyond the horizon.

Rays of light pierced through the craters and blemishes on the surface of the crater.

Even through the fully tinted visor,

the light was bright and powerful,

forcing Leandro to avert his eyes as they started to water.

For a brief moment,

the entire asteroid appeared to glow

as the sunlight reflected off the fine layer of dust coating the rock.

All was still and silent.

“It’s beautiful,” Christie whispered.

Leandro smiled. He spoke into his helmet,

his voice heard only by his own cramped ear.

“It really is. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

We can be like the explorers of old,

seeing wonders that are innocent and pure.”

He looked up to the distant stars.

“Oh, to have that life.”

This was the the first of two parts of

“Lights In The Sky”

by J.F.R. Coates, read for you by Khaki,

your faithful fireside companion.

Tune in next time to find out how the beauty of space

can soon turn to mortal danger.

As always, you can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,

or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for listening

to The Voice of Dog.