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

was reddened with stale blood, and on it were scrawled the words ‘BAD KITTY’.

 

The Nexu stepped into the dim light, hissing, grinning, the face of a spider, the striped body of a big cat, it slobbered and drooled as its four red eyes locked on Loic, two of those eyes possessed excellent dayvision, and the other two could track you in the dark by your bodyheat, Loic knew all about them from his days of reading, studying the galaxy’s inhabitants on Draethos. Twin whiplike tails curled around its flank, its mane of sharp quills positively bristled, it eyed Loic with the cold lust with which one eyes a banthaburger after a three day fast! How could he be so stupid, he had stumbled into the exact place he was trying to avoid all along! He clutched the spear tightly, but he knew it was useless against this beast, like bringing a vibroblade to a blasterfight. 

He turned to run, but the door had swung shut by itself and Nexus were fast, catlike predators; it pounced and swatted Loic with its paw, slamming him against the wall. He took it in the shoulder and rolled to the floor with a nimble dexterity that could only be the result of pure adrenaline, his weapon clattered off into the shadows though. Groaning, he clambered to his feet, the first blow had been playful, testing its prey, the next strike would be the deathstroke. Loic could only shut his eyes and wince.

 

A grating sound from above, a rumbling of steel, a trapdoor was opened, the ceiling of the Nexu’s den was the trapdoor floor of Sarkraa’s throneroom; electric light spilled down from above, voices clear and loud now. The Nexu was only distracted for a few seconds, it quickly turned its greedy gaze back to the quivering snack cowering in its corner. A brightly-feathered dart whistled through the air and stuck into the beast’s rippling-muscled neck. It reared back, locked on its target, Loic, and just as it pounced, it stumbled, staggered, and crashed facefirst to the floor, unconscious, tranquilised. All the water Loic had gorged in his cell emptied into his already-soaked Corellian-fibre trousers.

 

‘OH-HO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!’ Came a croaking, bass-heavy laughter which chilled Loic with its familiarity. ‘OH-HO-HA-HA-HAAAAA!’ The last syllable wretched out like phlegm. ‘Look, look everybody, that bossuk-roach of a smuggler has found his way into Bad Kitty’s lair! OH-HO-HO-HO-HO-HAA! Are you trying to do my job for me Monerat!? I will not have you meet your fate so quickly spice-runner scum. I have plans for you!’ Loic squinted up into the bright lights of Sarkraa’s audience chamber, but they blinded him, and he could only make out silhouettes of a small entourage surrounding a hazy, hulking Huttlike shape. Two Gamorreans, gooseturd green, came bustling and grunting into the Nexupit, and Loic was once again clasped in binders and frogmarched away.

 

They traversed a few meandering passageways and reached an ancient turbolift, barely functioning, it took them up a few levels and spat them out into the entrance to Sarkraa’s lair. Rescued from a Nexu to be slowcooked by a Hutt, what fucking luck this!? Thought Loic, angrily, he found himself wishing the creature in the pit below had opened his throat and been done with it.

 

He was prodded forward into the main chamber, a large cave-like room, booths at the sides, a firepit burned away, roasting some unidentified large animal on a slow-spit. A bar in the corner, well-lit and well-stocked with various wines, koja-rums and Jawa beers, among them Loic glimpsed a familiar-shaped blue bottle, the name written on the label in High Galactic, ‘Domaine de la Maison sur de Lac’, his father’s favourite tipple. Funny how you notice the strangest details in the moments before your death, time seemed to slow down, the brain focused on the most mundane things.

 

The trapdoor floor before the Hutt’s dais was now closed, and Loic feared to look up and meet Sarkraa’s gaze, he knew she would be staring at him with those blazing green eyeballs. Instead, he scanned the chamber, reminding himself he needed to be more mindful of his surroundings in case of escape chances.

 

The smoke in the room filled his nostrils, both from the firepit and the cigaara fumes hanging in the air. He clocked Bossk seated in a booth out of the way, the bastard was devouring a huge nerf steak, raw, the blood dripping with each fang-filled crocodile-sized bite. He paid no mind to the passing prisoner, he just masticated with his eyes half-lidded, trancelike as he feasted, like he was ready to shed his skin or lay some eggs or some shit. Putain de lézard, thought Loic, bitterly. Finally, he was brought before the Hutt and thrusted down to his knees. He looked up at her through bleary eyes and her grotesque mass came sharply into focus.

 

Loic often described her, privately, in his head, as a sunbleached turd. Sarkraa was not just rare in that she identified as a female, but she was also albino and her skin had the alabaster tone of beachwood, but mottled with hairy brown moles and purulent warts, and decorated with dinner-medals, and trails of green ooze from whatever wriggling creature she had last stuffed into her hideous, chevron-shaped maw. She observed her captive with large heavy-hooded eyes, they were daubed with crude thoadeye make up, badly applied, and her long dry lips were lined with a faint trace of red lipliner. Hutts always seemed to need to eat before they had the energy to speak, and she stuffed a handful of pickled sandmaggot kidneys into her trap from a sloshing jar at her bulging side.

‘Finally, we have you,’ she muttered, gleefully, between mouthfuls. ‘You have caused a lot of trouble Monerat. The casino job, the cargo you lost me, attempting to assassinate Okkra, and in my name!’ She shook her mighty head, her dangling earrings swaying, and tutted. Loic wondered why a creature with no ears to speak of would want to wear earrings and it made him think of his own bejewelled stud, and how he had used it to coax the guard, he found himself smiling, despite his dire situation, this enraged Sarkraa. An imperceptible finger-twitch and Loic was clouted round the ear roughly by the Gamorrean pig-guard. ‘Smiling I see. Well, we’ll see how much you’re smiling when you wake up from your scheduled surgery.’ With that bewildering statement, she cackled harshly, and another handful of fodder went into the hatch, slobbering, choking, chuckling.

 

‘Surgery?’ Said Loic, his voice quavering, an eyebrow cocked, the recalcitrant smile a distant memory. Sarkraa grinned, Loic’s heart lowered into his stomach cavity and hid. Somewhere behind Loic, Bossk spat out a bone, or some gristle, then proceeded to slurp noisily on some marrow.

 

Unlike Jabba’s notorious swinging palace, which was a very populous partyplace at the height of his reign, Sarkraa’s was almost empty, minimalist, you might say lonely. A couple of Weequays loitered, and Loic identified a trio of Noghri clustered at the bar. The blueskinned Chiss Maax was seated in a dark booth, invisible in the shadow but for his glinting eyes, his glittering rubystudded slippers crossedlegged neath the table, and a blue hand coiled round a glass of Gardulla.

 

‘Yes, surgery,’ spat the giant slug Sarkraa, ‘you’re so intent on assassinating Okkra for me sobeit. We’re sending you back with Bossk, and he’s going to drop you off, you’ll have  a little gift for my treacherous cousin Okkra…’ She nodded and a medical droid came trundling forward on its wheels, brandishing a syringe which it plunged suddenly into Loic’s buttock.

 

‘No, wait, I’ve got a better idea, why don’t we shpeeeeee…’ He felt his words slurring and all he could manage was a measly, whimpering ‘nooooo-nooooooo.’ The room spun like a clipped X-Wing. As he slumped down to the hay-covered floor he tried to count how many times he had been rendered unconscious in the last twenty-four hours, but that just made him pass out even quicker. The medical droid carried Loic’s sleeping form to the operating table in a backroom. While Loic was anesthetized the droid did its work, and in his mind’s dreamscape he once again encountered his friend and mentor, Jaster Durane.

 

Jaster peered at Loic through his glareshades; his bald head ringed by red hair, which grew into a long braided singular pigtail at the back, and his long rust-coloured beard forking down into two points at his torso, where he tucked it into his belt under his round belly. They were casting fishingpoles into a pumping, thumping, cascading waterfall, attempting to snare ubrufish for supper. ‘So you’re leaving then?’ Jaster asked as he flicked his line out.

 

‘Yes,’ replied Loic, his own beard overgrown and scraggly, ‘next few days, maybe the third moon.’

 

‘Shame.’ Jaster speared a writhing fish and they cheered, he tossed it into the makeshift basket, woven of leaves and vines. ‘I was just getting used to having someone around...’

 

‘I only see you once every four standards or so! You’re more elusive than a glooth!’

 

‘Still. We’ve learned a lot together, experimenting with the plants.’

 

‘You’ve taught me much.’

 

‘The plants have taught us both much.’ Jaster spiked another fish, he was so much better at this! ‘What will you do?’

 

‘I think I’ll head to Sorros, it’s close enough to civilisation but still obscure enough for me to keep a low profile. I need to figure out a way to pay off the Hutts, once I pay off Sarkraa for the cargo lost I can be free.’ Loic and Jaster ruminated for a while as they watched the waterfall for anymore telltale flickers of fins. After five minutes, Jaster caught another one, a big one, that was enough for both their suppers. ‘How are you so good at it this?’

 

‘Practice of course,’ then he smirked, mischievously.

 

‘What?’

 

‘And something else.’

 

‘Something else?’

 

‘Yes, pollyroot, when taken in very, very small amounts, can increase visual acuity and reflexes, jedi-like reflexes you might say!’

 

‘Your brain is an incredible encyclopaedia pharmacopoeia of the plants of this planet!’

 

‘Plants can do a great many wonderful things. They bring us life, nourish us, enlighten us - in many ways they are our gods.’

 

‘Maybe,’ mused Loic, taking a swig from his water canteen, ‘when I get the Hutts off my back I can come back here and gather some of that dimexy-erm-meth-stuff…’

 

‘Dimexymethelene?’

 

‘That’s the one, we need nicknames for these plants.’

 

‘Gather it for what?’

 

‘Maybe synthesise it. Don’t you think there would be less evil in the galaxy if more people had the spiritually-enlightening journeys we have undertook in the spell of these hallucinogens? It makes you realise there’s more to life, it makes you… I dunno’… Feel the force I guess…’

 

Loic was brought abruptly out of his sweet reverie by another sharp injection, he was on his back, naked, on a cold operating table, a bright white light blared into his eyes and he could hear the medical droid whirring around the room, the tinkle and rattle of equipment being replaced, disposed of… What had happened?

 

Loic tried to lift himself from the operating table but he was strapped. He turned his head as much as his bindings would allow. The medical droid was scooting around going about its business paying him little heed. He strained his neck, scanning the room, it was less of a sickbay and more like a grimy back-alley Eriadu surgery, where unhinged disbarred criminal doctors would remove tracking chips and change facial features for a few credits. There were nameless ill-maintained pieces of machinery scattered around the chamber, even a battered bacta-tank in one corner. Hooks chains and barbs hung from the ceiling – surgery or torture chamber? On a metal bench, past Loic’s feet, were the droid’s tools, wicked knives, scalpels, and handsaws, some darkened by rust and dried blood. The surgery door whooshed open, positioned as he was, Loic could not see who entered. ‘What have you done to me?’ Loic asked the droid.

 

‘Take the prisoner back to his cell. See he doesn’t escape this time.’ The droid said