Loic Monerat & The Lizard Brain Spice Smuggling Syndicate by Chris Herron, Greg Provan (book club suggestions .TXT) 📖

A short story C.T Herron & Greg Provan

Loic took a turbo lift right down to the poor sectors, down to the bottom where the buildings met the ground, as with most planets on the rim the higher you were situated the better the conditions, the poor sectors, however, had their uses. Loic felt more at home down with the criminals, thieves and poverty rather than the affluent flamboyance of the upper levels with the predictably materialistic denizens. Drops of rain found their way down to him and he walked, ground cabs came humming past and advertisements flashed on the huge wall boards attached to the immense buildings that stretched into eternity. It always seemed wet in the poor sector to Loic, wet and dark, as the tawdry artificial lighting gave off poor illumination.

He fingered the bejewelled stud in his ear, then had second thoughts, removed it deftly, and slipped it into his pocket, a beacon for would-be muggers in this downtrodden sector. Running a hand across his balding, glabrous head, his beady blue eyes flitted and flickered, seeking out the poorer quarters where the ragged people go, he had one aim in mind, one mission to accomplish, one of the only reasons one would venture so far down into the lower levels alone and unarmed, sweat lashed from his forehead and tickled his eyes, each bone in his body ached as though it were being crushed in a vice while being hacksawed simultaneously. He knew what he needed...

A soothing sibilant susurration somewhere in the Stygian alleyway to Loic Monerat's side, he shivered involuntarily, but padded forward with mock confidence nonetheless. His jittering fingers betrayed his angst, ceaselessly fingering his empty holster but a blaster wouldn't help him where he was headed, it would be rendered inoperable before he was twenty paces from the right door. One side of the damp street was lit by a weak neon glow, drinking houses, the other was framed in a rubicund tinge, a weak mist served as a screen to both fornicators and passing voyeurs. Such delights could wait though; ruefully Loic pushed passed a couple of ecclesiastics who were in a stake of sinful drunkenness. He picked one of their pockets on the way past, his fingers were still nimble despite his affliction...

...Mustn't think about the affliction, he thought. The sickness, like the azotic, unctious gunge of the streets, was settling in deep and visceral now, he could feel his stomach cramping up, sending retching, stabbing bolts through his insides, loosening his bowels in the process. He braced himself against the pain, as if to reassure this to himself, he pulled his collar round his neck. It was hibernal in the poorer quarters at this time of year, and the cold was only made fiercer by his infirmity.

The twenty credits he had just lifted from the passing dipsomaniacs, added to the thirty already in his possession, would get him in where he needed at the very least, then the real work began, he slipped the chips into his pocket with the others, his 'safe pocket', impossible to pick. Doing a job like this unarmed, seemed like lunacy, or impetuous suicide, but Loic knew weapons would only raise suspicion, put them on the defensive straight away, he had to go in surreptitiously, and when he struck, he had to strike swift and precise, alacritous like the slitherettes he used to see in the deserts of Tattooine. But the job was secondary on his mind, it could not even be attempted until he assuaged the aching in his bones and muscles, and only one thing would scratch that particular itch - spice - beautiful, golden, warming, healing spice, it was all he could focus on. Through the ethereal mist, glimmering darkness, and the blurring of his vision, his destination came into sight...a figure stood close by, his face seemed ugly, leering and reptilian in the Cimmerian shade...

The towering Trandoshan bouncer studied Loic through orbless inky black eyes, the alien gaze as unsettling as the creature’s hulking form. Trandoshans were a pitiless species devoid of morality and compassion, theirs was the rule of the gun. They regularly found work as bounty hunters, assassins or muscle. They possessed a certain low cunning, as Loic knew only too well. The famed bounty hunter, Bossk, had been on his tail since he bungled robbing that casino on Ventus 6. His stubborn pursuer somehow never seemed far behind despite Loic making every effort to disguise his movements.

As Loic reached the distance of a few paces the Tranodoshen’s mouth opened, a warning hiss, violence was now imminent. In a feat of prestidigitation he adroitly flashed a series of hand signals, communicating he was a spice runner and thieves guild ally. The brute moved aside. Loic was greeted by a wall of smoke; his seasoned eyes quickly took in his surroundings. As spice dens went it was perfunctory, the dimness was disturbed only by a single artificial flame, on makeshift pallets and rickety chairs a selection of miscreants, cut-throats and vagabonds were in various stages of torpor. Loic fingered his empty holster once more. There was a buxom serving wench in one corner behind a makeshift wooden counter. She ran a dirty cloth over the wooden top but served to only move the grime from one area to another.

“Spice and a drink.” Loic said to her, quiet and hoarse. She eyed him for a long second till he slid over a pile of credits. She took them with a disdainful snort of her porcine nose. Loic would have liked to have slapped her fat greasy face but instead meekly pocketed his spice and shuffled over to an empty booth, drink in hand. It was at last time..

...habitually he would sit behind a table, facing the door, back to the wall, with his hand circumspectly positioned on his blaster, but as this only served to remind him of his nakedness, he clasped the free hand on the cup of firewater. He didn't even need to smell the beverage to confirm it was firewater, that drink was the only drink that was ever served in spice dens. People weren't here for the drink anyway, a basic mixture of ethanol and octane, little or no flavouring or sweetener. Closing his nostrils he knocked the drink back with a grimace, the califacient slid down his throat, burning at his insides as it went, it served to settle his stomach and calm his tremulous hands.

He just needed them steady to do the spice, he'd been agonizing for this moment since his feet had touched down on Eriadu, the shavit-hole of a planet he currently occupied. The only thing this planet was famous for, was being the birthplace of that treacherous bastard Tarkin. It was about to become famous for something else though...but first, the spice, glorious spice.

He inspected his purchase, wrapped as it was in greasy, recycled loub paper. This is the lower levels of Eriadu's main port of trade, he wasn't exactly expecting glitterstim, what in fact he got, was a low grade cut of ryll, bastards, he'd have to double the dose, he did so and washed it down with the dregs of firewater.

The spice took effect almost immediately; everything took on a warm glow, as if the den was macerating in golden sunshine. As the toxins took course through his veins, he slouched back, savouring every second, luxuriating in its magical effects. His mind became focused now, no distractions, the spice hit massaged the knots out of his psyche and he felt reborn and rehabilitated, ready to take on anything, and he'd have to be. This self-appointed mission would earn him enough credits to pay off the Hutt cartel and clear his prodigious debt to them, the casino job was supposed to have done it, but that had gone wrong, horribly, horribly wrong. It seemed like lately, every time Loic fixed a problem, another two presented themselves. The spice had took the edge off the worry, but he had to act fast, now, while he was feeling confident, soon the effects of the ryll would wear off and the pain would return.

As he rose, a Trandoshan entered the den and his heart jumped a little, but he quickly noticed the yellowish hue to the creature’s scales and realised it wasn’t Bossk and relaxed, all these Trandoshans looked the same to him. He had impulsively reached for his blaster, once again noticing its absence…on his way past the bar he alleviated an Anomid and a Mirialan sitting there of their spice, nobody noticed and he put his head down and walked on, pocketing his prizes with a lopsided grin…

Satiated, Loic stepped through the puddles, through the endless disenchanted streetwalkers; pick-pockets, recidivists, the weak and unfortunate. Everyone had a story; always a great unfairness was dealt them by the sardonic gods, some or other fabled injustice. Loic blended in. People didn’t pay much attention to him and this served him well. The downpour steadily seemed to lessen. Gazing heavenward, Loic watched lairs of hover cabs line the sky nearly all the way to the top of the huge structures that made up the city. The poor sectors were somewhat deceptive, some of the richest business men in the city lived and worked in these parts and some of the most ostentatious and affluent houses could be found if only one knew where to look. The thing was; why would burglars and thieves look for game amid the poor districts? instead they would scale the heights to the real wealth. Also there was a certain honor among the thieves and scum of the poor districts, they preferred to steal from the rich, as they were the ones they hated. The higher you lived the more powerful you were and living with the street rats, scum and drug addicts reminded them of this feeding their impetus for revenge.

When Loic had been a spice smuggler, in the heyday of the Kessel mines (the misshapen, asteroid-like prison-planet where the galaxy’s chief supply of spice was mined) his constant dalliance with the drug, handling it, smelling it, seeing it, getting its fine dust on his clothes and in his hair, being surrounded by it on his ship every day, lead, he believed, to a propensity for the substance. He dabbled more and more in its intoxicating properties and found that mild doses of the drug took a lot of the pressure and stress off the often-tumultuous job of spice-running, it helped him keep his cool under duress, it focused his mind when navigating particularly tricky flight paths. Kessel was in a part of the galaxy that was perilous to fly through, in the outer rim territories, near Hutt Space, and the dangerous Celestial Maw, accidents can and will happen, and when your brains are fried on heavy spice addiction they are even more likely.

Loic had been spice-running for the Hutts about a year and he had been taking the spice himself for about three months when it happened. He was shipping some particularly pure grade spice from Kessel to a moon along the Trellius Trade Route. Foolishly not noting the purity of the spice he took a rather large hit and overdosed, passing out at the controls of his ship. Eventually the ship was clipped by an asteroid and was sent hurling on a collision course with the nearby planet Formus. Loic regained consciousness with just enough time to jettison his escape pod, the ship was a write-off and crashed with all its load into an ocean on the almost-deserted planet. The Hutt Loic was running this spice for was a particularly disreputable gangster by the name of Sarkraa, a rare female Hutt