#draken bite

@taliwrites tagged me for this character music meme! and i am not immune. i have no idea who has done this yet or who would like to do it, so i will tag heychief and teme-xuha and also encourage anyone who has not yet to post some tracks. in the meanwhile, have some void cowboy tunes.

you're a stranger til she whispers, 'you can stay' you're a stranger til she whispers that your journey's over

ACCESSING ADDITIONAL DATA

  AZARAKH, CLANLESS

Unlawful Flight to Avoid Imprisonment; Escape; Theft from  Interplanetary Shipment; Kidnapping; Unreported Acquisition of Purported Eldan Artifacts; Conspiracy to Possess Prohibited Technology;  Conspiracy to Traffick Illegal Access Devices; Unlawful Possession of Unregistered Arcane Items (15); Robbery; Obtaining By False Pretenses; Assault of an Imperial Officer; Failure to Appear; Accessing an Imperial Computer Terminal Without Authorization for the Purpose of Monetary Advantage and Private Financial Gain; Suspected Mayhem; Intrusion; Unlawful Seizure or Control of a Spacecraft; Using as Genuine a Forged Document; Obstruction of Imperial Justice

    The quiet was how you knew you had jumped.     The world rushed away and when you landed -- if you could even call it landing -- your footsteps didn't make a sound.  All the little affirmations of your own being went silent. You could no longer hear the echo of your own heartbeat or the sound of your breath in your nose. Your ears didn't even ring in protest. It was like the space between them had emptied out the back of your head.      You had no place in the void. The ground was only the ground because it was where your feet were and the sky was only the sky because it was above you. You kept your bearings by following the vague shadows of buildings or grass or trees in the world beyond, watching leaves rustle in a breeze you could neither hear nor feel.    Even someone who jumped as often as Pam did never quite got used to the silence. It was why -- for just a second -- he didn't think twice about the sound of footsteps stirring the grass behind him, and the metal rattle of spurs: chi-chink, chi-chink, chi-chink.  

    You got to be kidding me.

    There were days Bite wished he'd stuck with surveying asteroids and left the treasure hunting to the movies. The movies did it better: you always got the last word, and when you nearly died you woke up in a medbay surrounded by relieved, exultant faces. You weren't robbed at a toll-road trap and dumped face-down in a drainage sewer after the pack of vultures picked over your unconscious body for anything they could sell. He could almost hear Verin's mocking voice in the back of his head: there's a reason they don't make bucks like you hunters, Yazarakh.

    The big draken stared up through the sewer grate. The processing warehouse was dimly lit and empty, but he could just make out the ceiling tiles overhead. They were all the same size. That was good. That helped. He had drawn the rune by sight alone a thousand times, but without his pistol, there wasn't any room to get sloppy. The last thing he needed was to escape from a trash gutter just to translocate half his body into a duracrete slab.

    Bite was still shaking the water out of his velvet when the human found him. He heard the footsteps before the voice -- there's a reason they don't make bucks like you hunters, Azarakh -- but it was still too late. He froze where he stood, stripped to the waist, barefoot and reeking like sewer water. Little sparks of magically-induced electricity were still popping in the air around him. Two of his claws were broken. There was trash in his quills.

   "I'm going to need you to stop right there and show me your hands," the voice began, "if you would in fact be so kind."

   At first he complied, slowly raising both clawed hands palm-out in surrender. It bought him time while he looked for an exit. Instead he saw only the human's shadow sprawled out ahead of him. Not so tall, but bulky, armour-clad, and carrying a sword?