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  Interesting. What is your headgear for?

  Oh, it records my brainwaves. If I have to record a deposition, it confirms what I thought I was seeing. As you know, with an aura, what I see might not be what is in front of me.

  He nodded and continued to explore the area.

  When the crystal was full, she removed it carefully and set the second crystal in place.

  Three minutes later, the crystal was complete, and she stowed it next to the first in her thigh pack.

  Avina flexed her arms and loosened the muscles of her neck. “All right, let’s get to work.”

  Chapter Four

  What do you mean, work?

  I mean seek out the auras and get a feel for what is going on here. I need to meet them, and there is only one way to do it.

  You are going to confront hostile auras?

  Of course. It’s my job.

  I will accompany you.

  She laughed. “I may lose power for you. Are you all right with that?”

  Why are you talking out loud?

  I do it when I am nervous. This is not as comfortable for me as I pretend.

  He grinned and waved her on.

  Avina turned her head away and made a face. With deliberate calm, she barricaded her brain against unwanted intrusion and reached out for one of the little objects strewn across the deck.

  A blurring of light sprang forth, forming a column that turned into a bark-skinned being with glowing pink eyes.

  Why have you come here? Even the aura’s spectral voice was a low, rumbling snarl.

  I have been sent here after the attacks on several visiting personnel.

  They trespassed.

  This is an unmanned vessel. They were within salvage rights to investigate.

  It is our vessel.

  It is a huge, functioning space station drifting into occupied space. Your privacy will not last long.

  Enough!

  The aura shot his hand forward and into her sternum, or rather, he tried to.

  Utolian grabbed him and pinned his spectral arms behind his back.

  Avina was stuck watching two disembodied beings wrestle for supremacy. Idly, she kicked another object, and when the aura attacked without speaking, she lunged forward and pulled it apart.

  Her actions froze the grappling between the two other beings in the room.

  Gentlemen. While I would love to watch you two rolling around together until this station rots around you, I do not have that kind of time.

  The Grafthian scowled but remained immobile. What do you want?

  Tell me about the other occupants of this station.

  We are criminals and madmen. Well, one less madman thanks to you. What did you do to him?

  I dissolved him into energy without consciousness. He is now in whatever afterlife your people have.

  He looked distinctly uncomfortable, but there was a ray of hope in his eyes. Will you destroy me as well?

  She looked around at the empty command deck. The sparse environment and the lack of new people would drive an aura mad. They fed on the energy of the living, and in lieu of a food source, they would feed on each other. Aura degrading another aura was a bad thing.

  Do you want to be destroyed? It was a calculated risk. Her conversation partner could attack again.

  Don’t you want to know what I did in life to get me here?

  No. I just want to know if you want me to ease you into the next phase of your existence.

  May I think about it?

  She knew in that moment that his answer was no. He was attached to his existence, and he wished it to continue, such as it was.

  You may take as long as you like.

  Avina dismissed him quickly. He disappeared in a flash, and Utolian blinked at her.

  What did you do to him?

  Dismissed him. He is back to his anchor point right now. He will be stuck there for a while.

  What is your next move?

  Back to the shuttle. I need to get some food in me.

  He shook his head. I forget that you need sustenance. I will be your guard while you exit. I am sure that a few of those remaining will not want to pass up their chance for a bit of an energy boost.

  Point taken. Watch my back.

  He waggled his brows at her, and she sighed and shook her head. With the data crystals in her pack, she had the first procedures done. She had also made contact with the aura inhabitants. It was time for a snack and a change of oxygen supplies.

  The way back through the halls was tense. The occupants knew what she was, and they were formulating a plan. That was usually not a good thing.

  They could communicate at the speed of thought. She had to walk the halls the old-fashioned way.

  There was a thrill of relief in her when she saw the door that would lead to her airlock. That was the moment when they struck.

  Two auras jumped Utolian and two more struck and bit at her with ravenous need.

  She fought them off as hard as she could, but her joy at seeing the exit had thrown off her normal defenses. Avina ruptured one of the auras, but the other managed to grab hold of her energy and deplete her. She dropped to the ground, and her attacker wrenched her breather off.

  “Avina!”

  She heard the voice, but she actually heard it through her ears. Avina rolled over and the bright column of Utolian was growing solid. “What the hell?”

  He pulled in his two attackers, and the walls of the station pulled in toward him. Metal flew toward his body in strips, and he was soon standing in front of her. Purply-blue, tall, strong and bare-ass nude.

  She sucked in the air of the station and coughed. It was stale, dry and had a chemical tang that had probably been used to subdue the inhabitants.

  Her body throbbed in protest when she tried to move, but she had to get back to her ship.

  “Avina.”

  Her voice came out of him in a sigh. “We need to get back in the ship.” She coughed again, wheezing hard.

  He walked toward her with slow movements then knelt and scooped her up, carrying her to her ship.

  The scans were quick, and the one remaining aura stayed away from the bristling hostility that Utolian embodied.

  Avina concentrated on breathing. She used her sleeve as a filter, but some of the compound still got in.

  She was dizzy and disoriented by the time they were inside the ship, and only the sweet canned air mitigated some of the effect of the compound.

  The doors slid shut, and she coughed out. “Emergency release, Avina Alpha Jenkins.”

  The Hunting Haunt released from the docking position and floated free of the station.

  Utolian settled her on the small bunk in the medical area, and he slipped a breather mask over her face.

  “How can you touch me?”

  “I am physical again. It was time, really.” He stroked her hair back and smiled. “Breathe slowly, Avina. I will find something to wear.”

  She lifted her hand and pointed to a storage unit. There were several generic bodysuits designed for men. He read a few packages and then removed a dark suit from its pack and started to put it on.

  It was an exceptionally snug fit, but as he breathed, it flexed with him until it looked almost comfortable.

  Avina wanted to look away, she really did, but the aura that she had nagged, negotiated with and used to sniff out candidates had just taken on physical form. That never happened.

  “What did you just do?” she stared as he moved around her ship like he owned it. Sure, she had brought him out before for conversation on long, boring voyages, but she hadn’t realised that he would be paying attention.

  “I reconstituted a body. I was energy before I was physical, and when the physical no longer served me, I gave it up. Living in the orb was fine until the day a new Aura Speaker was assigned to me, and I looked forward to being summoned to assist.”

  As she watched, he prepared tea and got her a bag of water. He handed it to her with a grin. “Th
e tea will be ready in a minute.”

  She inhaled, pulled the mask away and scowled at him. “You mean, you could have become physical at any time?”

  “Certainly. Aura Speakers have been calling on me for generations. I enjoyed the occasional forays into the physical world.” He made the tea with expert precision, as though he had done it a thousand times before.

  She coughed again, and he reached over to smack the mask back over her face. He flicked some toggles, and she inhaled sharply and fell asleep.

  * * * *

  Unlike most of his kind, Utolian had never been content to drift through the stars, consuming their energy and speaking only with his own people. He craved a life with one of the ground-walking species, and so, he had built a body and lived amongst them, learning their ways.

  It took him four tries to find a situation where he could be the kind of being he craved. Flesh beings were locked into social structures that bewildered him. He had found a way to become king, and while he was not very proud of some of the things he had done, it had offered him the chance to embed himself in the orb to be passed from Aura Speaker to Aura Speaker.

  The Aura Speakers were some of the few physical beings that could see him in any form. It was a freedom that he enjoyed, and he had flitted through the generations until he landed in the hands of a woman that he could feel from inside the orb.

  From the first time she had summoned him, Utolian knew that he could live with this woman in the physical form and tie himself to her. Avina was brave, compassionate, witty and her body was curved in all the right places.

  He had always enjoyed experiencing all that a physical form had to offer and now was no different. His new body was excited at the prospect of a proper mate at long last. He had been alone for a very long time. That endless moment had just come to an end.

  Chapter Five

  Avina felt like hammered hell. As she sat up, she heard a shift from the lav; apparently, her guest wasn’t a figment of her imagination.

  Now that he was physical, she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to remain formal with him. What she wanted to do was kick his ass, but it didn’t look like she would get the opportunity. She wasn’t sure she could kick that high.

  The bag of water was warm from contact with her body, but she didn’t care. She yanked open the tab and sucked furiously. She hadn’t been this thirsty in a while.

  “You are awake, Aura Speaker.”

  She snorted and kept going until the bag was empty. She coughed a little. “I am awake, Your Majesty.”

  “You may call me Utolian. My people have a new ruler now, and she is doing wonderfully well. I look forward to meeting her one day.”

  Avina shifted until her legs were over the edge of the bunk. “Is she a relative?”

  “No. I have never had children.”

  He handed her a steaming cup, and she inhaled the scent of her favourite tea. Avina narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean, never?”

  “This is a reproduction of my fourth body. It was the physical representation that you could recognize, so I stayed with it.”

  Utolian pulled up the tiny rolling seat from the medical area, and he sat there while she drank her tea, his long legs taking up all the extra space.

  When half the fruity brew was gone, she asked him, “What are you, exactly?”

  “I thought you knew. After all, you have my ball in your pocket.”

  She snorted and continued to glare at him. “Not funny. You were registering as a powerful aura but nothing else.”

  He shrugged. “My people are born energy, and we live as energy. I taught myself to assemble a body from the worlds around me and eventually put myself in a position to rule. Life was very interesting as a king.”

  “I don’t want to imagine.”

  “You are right, you don’t. It was another body and another set of experiences.” Utolian’s grin was genuine but a little dark with memories.

  She had done her reading on all of her learning tools. She knew about Utolian’s history, and while it was occasionally bloody, he was known as a fair man and a bit of a flirt. He had been no worse than any other ruler of the time and better than most.

  Avina finished her tea.

  He took her cup and refilled it.

  “Why did you take on physical form now?”

  “You needed a lift, and I was unable to render it without a body. I took the mass I needed from the station, and here we are.”

  She sipped at her tea. “Why now?”

  “You couldn’t breathe. In fact, you stopped breathing twice while on this very medical bed.”

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Six hours. Whatever their air is laced with, it does not agree with your physiology.” He shrugged and handed her a data pad. “Here is the recording of your vital statistics during your nap.”

  Avina scanned and wrinkled her nose as she watched the reports that showed how her body had fluctuated. He was right, she had stopped breathing at several points, and someone had switched her to solid oxygen feed and used the emergency systems to get her breathing again before resuming a basic atmosphere.

  She was rather grateful that she hadn’t been awake for it. Her throat was still raw.

  Idly, she patted her thigh pack and sighed at the feel of the data crystals. “Time to get back to work, I guess.”

  He blinked. “Just like that?”

  “Well, yes. That is what I am here for. Your presence is unexpected, but it doesn’t change my assignment. I was sent to examine this station, report on the state of the auras and make it safe for exploration by archaeological teams. With only one aura left to deal with, it shouldn’t take much time, but I would rather spend today going through the ship records. I feel a little delicate.”

  He nodded. “Would you like me to carry you?” He didn’t wait for an answer and scooped her up, teacup and all. Utolian settled her in her living area on the couch. “What else do you require?”

  “I need a meal or two. I have skipped a few.”

  When he left her to work at her food-prep unit, she kicked the base of her couch and pulled out the sealed crystal projector. It was one of Fixer’s toys and the only reason that Avina travelled to Morganti.

  When Utolian brought her a tray, she slipped one of the crystals into the reader and stared at the display. Three thousand years of activity as a prison had been recorded day by day. She used one hand to interact with the display while the other shovelled food in her mouth.

  Utolian watched her with an amused smirk on his face.

  She finally asked him, “What?”

  “It has been a few years since I have seen a woman eat with such enthusiasm.”

  Avina looked down at her nearly empty plate. “I was hungry. Should I defer my appetite for your delicate sensibilities?”

  “No. I have just not been around physical beings in a while. Appetite is one of those things that is the first memory to go.”

  As if to highlight his comments, his stomach growled alarmingly.

  She snorted. “Go and grab some ration packs.”

  He took off and headed for the dispenser station.

  She continued the examination and sorting of violent incidents on the station until she found what she was looking for. A pathogen was introduced, and it struck down all of the Grafthians in one wave of illness.

  The station had continued on its silent course and only occasional incursions to the station resulted in fatalities or madness for the landing parties.

  The auras on the station had always been dangerous, which made destroying four of them a little less painful for her.

  The final aura needed some investigation, so she began to flick through the files looking for the face that had been so near her own.

  Utolian sat next to her and watched her hands move.

  “How can you read while those files are flowing past?”

  “Practice. It is one of the things that they teach you in basic training. Well, inve
stigation training.” She bit her lip as she stared into the data that she was scanning.

  “So, you are trained to do more than simply speak with the dead.”

  “Not all ghosts are auras and not all auras are ghosts, as you well know. My people generate ghosts. We only attach to an area if there is a lot of emotion involved. It is rare that we attach to an item or walk free of tether.”

  She continued to flick through the images, pausing and backing up suddenly. “Aha! Gotcha.”

  “What do you have?”

  “The bastard who drained me. He will be getting hungry soon. You eat an Aura Speaker and a day later, you are hungry again.”

  She brought up his full file and read the charges that had sent him to the station. Murder, rape, theft and tax evasion were all listed. This was not a pleasant man.

  Yartu Njadu. Sentenced to live in exile and die alone. It was a pity that he hadn’t simply given up the ghost. His meanness had followed him into the next life.

  “That is him.” She sat back with satisfaction and sipped at the teacup that he had placed in her hand.

  “I am amazed that you found him in those thousands of inmates.”

  “He was in my face. It was hard to miss him.” She grimaced. “I am only glad that aura’s don’t have breath. I am sure that his would be nasty.”

  The Grafthian features were heavy, blunt, as if carved by a weighted hand. Their hair stood out in shaggy manes that surrounded their features. Their arms were proportionally longer than the human average and legs were bowed. When they wanted speed, they canted forward and used their hands for propulsion and balance.

  “So, what is your plan?”

  She looked at him and finally realised that she wasn’t alone in her ship anymore. “Um, I will put on a fresh EVA suit, more life support and head back to the station to take care of the survivor. He has taken my energy, so he will be easy for me to locate.”

  “I am coming with you.”

  “You can’t. I don’t have an environmental suit for you. If your body is biological, you could fall prey to the same gas that I did.”

  He shook his head. “There is no danger of that.”