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

in a garbled electronic utterance. Two burly, viscous-looking, brown-skinned ogres took to the unstrapping, Gamorrean guards.

 

‘Wait, I’m going to be sick,’ Loic vowed.

 

‘Nausea is to be expected,’ the droid told him. One guard undid the leg braces and the other pulled him off the table, Loic vomited over his hog-like face. The Gamorrean rubbed his eyes squealing. His grip on Loic’s arm loosened for a split second and Loic fell headfirst onto the tray with the medical droid’s equipment. Loic landed sorely on the floor with the clang and clatter of the sharp tools falling around him. ‘Dizziness is also to be expected.’

The Gamorrean with sick on his face pulled Loic up by the neck and began to strangle him, his companion winded Loic with a meaty fist to the midriff and pulled his arm back for another blow. ‘Stop! Take him to his cell… Alive.’ The beating stopped and they dragged the smuggler away, cursing angrily in their guttural primitive alien dialect.

 

Buru stood before Sarkraa’s palanquin. The audience chamber was full of cruel eyes and the air was rich with sardonic laughter. He had been pulled from the dungeon where he was found bound, gagged, and disgraced. It was the doing of that wretched smuggler. Buru knew how Sarkraa rewarded those who failed her. Her girthsome belly expanded as she inhaled greedily from her multi-chambered hookah. Upon exhalation a rank miasma obscured her for several heartbeats.

 

‘Sarkraa, I beg you….’ Buru’s pleas were subsumed by a roiling belch from the corpulent crime lord. She stuck a greedy, slimy hand into a cauldron by her side and pulled out a shrieking paddyfrog which she tossed into her cavernous chasmal mouth. The assembled goons, lickspittles, and hired killers, roared with laughter and glee. They wanted blood, Buru’s blood. Bastards. Buru had drunk with them all only yesterday, now he was friendless and doomed.

 

‘How could you be fool enough to let the smuggler escape?’ It was the blue-skinned majordomo who spoke. He stood at Sarkraa’s side, his baleful red eyes glowing through the smog. He had not been serving Sarkraa long Buru knew, loyal Buru had served her far longer. But Maax was her new favourite and most were just as fearful of him as they were of their bloated mistress.

 

‘He tricked me. He took me by surprise.’

 

‘You let a skinny human best you?’ Buru did not need to turn to recognize the voice of his own cousin, Vatu. Was it not Buru who had got his cousin a place at Sarkraa’s palace? If it were not for Buru, he would still be shovelling dung on his arid little farm. Vatu had repaid him with treachery.

 

‘I have always been loyal to you Mistress Sarkraa,’ Buru pleaded - beseeching mercy.

 

‘You have always been stupid,’ berated Maax, ‘I thought you may have been at least capable of watching over beaten and half-starved prisoners. Evidently not. I put far too much faith in you.’ The audience chamber roared in laughter, a full gaggle of villainous miscreants baying for blood, each drunker than the next.

 

‘Buru the brainless!’ Vatu shouted. More laughter and backslapping followed. Buru snapped. He made to charge at his cowardly cousin, but a Gamorrean guard pinned his arms behind his back.

 

‘I’ll kill you with my bare hands. You are weak Vatu, you have always been weak and timid. You always ran from a fight.’

 

‘Lies,’ Vatu sneered, elbowing his way to the front of the throng. ‘The human was too much for you, Buru the brainless.’ He gave Buru a backhanded slap.

 

‘Maybe I am stupid. Maybe I die today. But I am clever enough to take you with me to hell.’ Buru turned to Maax, ‘majordomo, before you kill me let me fight him – to the death.’ The mob roared their approval. Buru could read the fear in his cousin’s face and he was also aware how much Sarkraa liked her blood sport. Vatu was nothing to her, Buru knew, and the crowd were hungry for entertainment. The throne room fell silent, all eyes darted from Maax, to Sarkraa, and back again.

 

‘So be it!’ Sarkraa boomed. Everyone rushed for a better view, even those who had indolently lazed in the narcotic-tinged booths at the back. Even Ulf, the malodorous barman jostled for position. It took four herculean Gamorrean guards with their pikes to clear a decent sized ring atop the Nexu’s pit. ‘To the death!’ Sarkraa commanded as her clammy glutinous hand dipped once more into her cauldron.

 

Buru had nothing to lose. He was as good-as-dead one-way-or-another, and this knowledge released him from the icy grip of fear. He lunged at Vatu, but his smaller cousin was swifter and nimbly ducked under his grasp. Off-balance, Buru turned, but Vatu kicked him squarely in the chest and sent him backwards. Vatu leaped, his scaled forehead slamming into Buru’s nose. Buru fell, Vatu straddled his chest and peppered Buru’s face with savage blows. In desperation, Buru tried to buy room, room enough to find his cousin’s eyes. He grabbed Vatu’s head, his palms pressing on the ears, and dug his thumbs into Vatu’s eyes. Vatu screeched pathetically and pulled away. This was the chance Buru needed. Seizing the upper-hand, he rose and sent a straight left at Vatu’s face, and a right cross which span his cousin on his heels. Buru took Vatu’s neck in the crook of his elbow swung him over in a reverse hiptoss. Vatu hit the ground hard, he tried to push himself up but was too disorientated. Buru booted the side of his head as though he was kicking a ball, Vatu rolled over helplessly in a spasm. Buru proceeded to stomp open his skull and did not stop till the brains and gore dripped through the cracks onto the Nexu’s prone form forty-feet below. Maax raised his hand, silencing the crowd.

 

‘Congratulations, you have won yourself a few more hours of life. I suggest you make peace with whatever gods you pray to,’ scoffed Maax. ‘Take him to the cells until the Nexu wakes.’ With the bloodlust and the taste of murder upon him, Buru would have charged at that blue-skinned devil and bashed his head in, but he had been restrained by two Gamorrean guards, and he was dragged from the chamber.

As they got to the dungeon, Buru noticed with distaste two Weequay playing knuckle-dice on his old table. One got up and stood before Buru, ‘thanks for the new job,’ he rasped, then laughed in a gravelly snicker. Buru tried to get at his tormentor, but the brutes held him like a trap. The Weequay hit Buru in the gut and again in the face.

 

Buru was dragged back to the to the dungeons, the Weequay opened a cell door, and they launched him inside with such force that he bounced off the back wall. He writhed on the floor, dazed. He lay for some minutes until he thought back to killing Vatu. It was glorious. He could now die with honour. That gave him some small measure of solace. It gave him the strength to roll to his feet. It was then he looked across the passageway to the opposite cell, there, standing with his hands round the bars was the bald smuggler, Monerat. The bastard who had cost Buru everything.

 

The erstwhile jailor’s rage was impressive, thought Loic, as he watched the scale-faced cut-throat fume and spit. The Weequay had to call down with various gruesome threats before he would settle somewhat. Good, thought Loic, as Buru limited his murderous hatred to a stone-cold gaze from his shiny, nebulous eyes. That’s right, calm the fuck down. Now you have been thrust upon me again I am going to have to use you in my latest deception.

 

Loic gestured to Buru with his finger. You and me. Did the dolt understand? It was impossible to know. All he did was stare back, his mouth twitching with anger. Loic gestured again, he pointed to Buru, then himself, then pointed his finger up the passageway. You and I are going out. It took a few more times before Loic was satisfied the Nicto understood. The last thing Loic needed was this oaf in the cell across from him, but it was clear the Nicto was now firmly out of favour with Sarkraa, and it looked like he had taken quite a beating for his trouble. The only reason he is still alive is because the Nexu is out cold.

 

Loic raised a finger over his lips asking for silence, Buru nodded. Loic held up a silver object and activated it, a spiderweb-thin orange beam appeared. It was a small laser-cutter, used to slice open fresh cadavers, Loic had managed to pick it up when he had feigned dizziness and fell into the tray full of the medical droid’s instruments.

 

The new jailors, the Weequay, had added more bolts to the latches outside the cell door once they had eventually figured out how he had originally escaped, but once again nobody had thought to search his safe pocket. Keeping the small device palmed and out of sight of the Gamorrean guards had been child’s play to the gambling cheat and sneaky smuggler. Loic had already sliced through the bottom of one bar and was halfway through the top, with the bar removed it would give him enough room to wriggle out.

 

He had not been expecting his old friend Buru however. He knew the enraged ex-jailor would summon the guards if Loic tried to escape without him, out of spite alone. He was now bound to the creature. Buru watched with grim fascination as Loic severed the top of the bar and gently laid it on the cell floor. He was fearing another trick Loic knew. Loic gestured to Buru that he was going to slide over the laser-cutter, Buru nodded. Typically though, he did not toss the device over far enough, and even reaching through the bars Buru could not grab it. Loic had to assuage him with another diatribe of hand signals before he risked squeezing out his own cell, padding over to the laser-cutter - watching for the guards - and tossing it to Buru.

 

Out in the open now, Loic decided to get back in his cell. All he could do was wait for Buru to cut a bar loose. It gave him time to wonder what that droid had done to him. He had been violated in some way. There was a thin scar along his belly and when he prodded the region gingerly, he could feel something in there. The droid had probably used the same laser-cutter on his gut that he just passed to the Nicto. There was not time to ponder Sarkraa’s latest cruelty. All he knew was that he was booked to travel on the Hound’s Tooth again, and the destination was right into Okkra’s hideous gob. Why he was taken back to the cell and not ferried to the moon’s spaceport already he did not know. Trandoshans were notoriously stubborn, most likely Bossk had not finished haggling. This time he meant not to stumble into the Nexu’s lair upon his escape. Perhaps his former jailor could be of some use after all, he knew the bowels of the palace better than Loic ever would, maybe, just maybe, he could get them to a ship.

 

Buru at last severed the bar, Loic gestured for him to settle it down gently. The next part was to deal with the two Weequay. There was nothing else for it but to try and get them off-guard and attack. Loic gestured to Buru to make sure he understood and then they were both wriggling out of their cells. Buru pulled the bar out with him, it took Loic a moment to realise why, maybe he was not so stupid after all. They could hear the Weequay arguing with each other absorbed in their petty gambling.

Thankfully, if they hugged one wall, they were out of sight most of the way. Loic could feel his heart