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

were emotionless beings, their eyes gave away nothing if they did feel anything. Maax and Bossk were equally detached. Loic found himself filling with despair as the tanks filled with fuel, and the Nictos left to return to Sarkraa. He was shepherded into the Hound’s cargo area and hurled into a dank, small cell; three-foot by three-foot, high-tech electrocuting-vibrobars, a dismal bloodsmeared space on the cold floor for Loic to squeeze uncomfortably into.

 

On this dreaded ship, many souls had been extinguished, fumigating whatever Gods-of-Fire Bossk acknowledged, if any. Everything on the Hound’s Tooth was so clotted with blood, the ship’s metal positively rusted with it, that rubicund tinge to the walls, that slaughterhouse stench, that urticating atmosphere of death that lingered forevermore. In Loic’s cell he had just enough space to sit down cross-legged, encircled by vibrobars, and meditate. Perhaps learn to calmly accept his stark fate, look into the netherworld of the mind for some sort of hint, suggestion, of an afterlife, and therefore solace. A scraping sound caused him to open one eye, it was Maax, as the ship’s engines kicked in and stuttered to life, the Chiss pulled a short, ensanguined stool up to Loic’s cell and sat down.  

Loic attempted conversation with the majordomo a few times, but the response was dead-eyed silence, Loic might as well have been a ghost, the grubby smuggler went unacknowledged, he didn’t even warrant a glance. After a while Loic gave up attempting to engage the Chiss and he settled back down to his meditation, the gentle vibration of the Hound’s engines helped him to drift into a steady pattern of breathing that then allowed his mind to focus deeply. But sometimes it wandered, sometimes it recalled memories that floated into his dreamscape like starcruisers coming into dock around the orbit of his Mind’s Eye.

 

On the planet Draethos, in the jungleworld, the sun was an hour from setting and a noisy bustle of animal activity chirped and chimed through the trees as creatures hurried about their perfunctory business before darkfall. The twin moons could be seen cresting the horizon and two figures emerged from the deep, tangled undergrowth. It was a summer month, and they were dressed appropriately, in vests and loincloths, thin diaphanous robes shrouded their shoulders. They both clutched hiking staffs and vibro-machetes as they emerged from the jungle, covered in twigs and leaves, which they plucked from their person as they surfaced, blinking, into the bright, golden-evening candescence.

 

The stout, rounded figure with the braided red hair and forked beard was Jaster Durane, runaway royal and reclusive hermit. The short, nimble, demon-faced figure was Loic Monerat, thief, pickpocket, failed-spicerunner, also a runaway, on the lam from the Hutt cartel. They looked out over a lush green valley, but that wasn’t the most striking feature, which Jaster gestured to now, with a magnanimous sweep of his hand. Loic peered across the valley in awe at the sight.

 

Opposite the two temporary troglodytes, across the verdant valley, was a magnificent, pulchritudinous spectacle that caused Loic to gasp. Standing firm and erect, maybe 500 feet high, was an almighty stone pyramid. Five-sided, and straight as a die, it peaked in a sort-of antenna which bristled from its golden capstone, the mesmerising material of which flickered in the waning sunlight. ‘Wow,’ breathed Loic, as Jaster gulped from a water canteen, ‘how have you never shown me this before? What is it?’

 

‘A pyramid,’ some water sloshed down his fiery-red beard and he wiped his mouth with his wrist and sniffed.

 

‘I can see that! But, who, when, what is it for?’  

 

‘To those questions, nobody knows the answer, though many have speculated. It was here when the galaxy was colonised, it’s been here for who-knows-how-long!’

 

‘But if it was here back then, well that means it predates the Old Republic, even the Twelve Kingdoms Era,’ he thought for a second, ‘it could predate…’

 

‘It could predate hyperspace travel itself,’ asserted Jaster, ‘come let’s take a look.’

 

An hour and a half later they had crossed the treacherous valley, sidestepping the snapping bites of a few disgruntled clawfish, which festered in its swampy trenchbottom. After a short but arduous climb up the other side, Loic stood, sweating, as he ran a hand over the first stone on the corner of the first step of the towering prehistoric pyramid. Age and wisdom seemed to somehow resonate off the very stone. Loic noted the size of these monolithic blocks in amazement and passed the comment to Jaster.

 

‘Some of these building-blocks are enormous,’ the weasel-faced smuggler noted as he stroked one’s smooth-hewn surface. Jaster was opening up a clothbundle, laying out their lunch on it which had been wrapped up inside of it. Lunch was an assortment of local treefruits, rootveg and bushberries, unnamed, unidentified, but Jaster knew them all, which were safe to eat, and which were not, ‘all fruit is edible,’ he would say, ‘but some fruit is only edible once!’ Jaster informed Loic of what he knew of the pyramid as they devoured their multicoloured snacks, which flowed with exotic juices down their mouths and hands, dying their skins bright purples and reds.

 

‘Hmmm, yeah,’ sniffed Jaster Durane as he swallowed a mouthful of yellow berries, ‘I’ve studied this strange monument for many nights in the past, and the more you learn about it, the more enigmatic it becomes. For example, the biggest block I could find and measure, was in excess of some 20 feet high, so,’ he paused to pick a pip from his teeth, ‘could weigh anything up to a hundred tons or more! Furthermore, they are hewn from a type of stone called lavenderstone, which changes colour, but the only source for this stone is a quarry on the other side of the planet. So somehow they’ve transported it thousands of miles, in an age supposedly preceding modern technology, then they’ve lifted them all up into this shape here, and fitted them, loosefitting, no calcite-cement, to within a thousandth of a degree of accuracy!’ He paused to pop another berry into his mouth.

 

‘The big question,’ Jaster continued, ‘is how, when there was supposed to be no sentient species out here at that time, did whoever achieved this, transport these immense stones such vast distances, and hoist them so precisely into place? The whole structure seems to be astronomically-aligned too, and contains all sorts of sacred geometry.’ Loic pondered Jaster’s intriguing information as he shovelled a green leafy vegetable into his bearded mouth and savoured its salty, piquant taste.

 

‘There’s only two ways this could have happened,’ declared the disgraced smuggler, chewing thoughtfully. Jaster cocked a quizzical eyebrow at his companion and awaited a response with bated breath. ‘Giants,’ said Loic, ‘there must be a race of giants hereabouts, such as those that inhabit the Vagadarr System, living-stone giants they have there, said to be as big as mountains!’

 

‘If there were any such species hereabouts Loic, I’m sure I would have noticed them, or somebody would have mentioned them by now.’ Scoffed Jaster, picking a berry seed from his beard and flicking it away.

 

‘Okay then, the force.’

 

‘What?’

 

‘The force must have been used, to transport the stones, to put them in place, Jedi powers, levitation. Yes, Jedis must have built this monument, maybe it’s imbued with the force.’

 

‘Possibly,’ mused Jaster, ‘though the Jedis weren’t this far out from The Core that long back in time, but who knows, it’s a mystery for sure.’

 

‘Have you ever been inside?’

 

‘I don’t know if there even is an inside, is it hollow, or solid? I cannot find an entrance and even if I did, whoever-built-it probably has it cursed at worst, boobytrapped at best! Only a fool would go poking about in ancient tombs or temples or whatever-they-may-be!’

 

‘Let’s climb it then.’

 

‘Ha!’ Cackled the ginger-haired recluse, abruptly. ‘Are you mad? My old bones won’t get me up there, I’m already exhausted from the trek here. If you want to climb it, go ahead, Old Jaster will wait here and digest my meal and watch the moons rise.’

 

‘Maybe you’re right, it is awfully tall!’ Loic dismissed the idea and joined his friend seated on the first step of the mighty stone structure. ‘Do you have any of that lunaweed you harvested last season left?’ Jaster cast Loic an impish smile with a twinkle of the eye, as he produced a small leaf from his robe’s recesses. They chewed the lunaweed and watched the double moons rise as its delirious effects took hold of their senses, enveloping them in fits of laughter with intermittent flights of euphoria.

Once they had sobered up again, an hour later, they set up a makeshift camp for the night at the foot of the enigmatic pyramid. The great monolith seemed to glow slightly in the dark, as if bound by some unseen energy, some mystical force. They set a fire and put some water to boil which Jaster Durane mixed with ground-up vinebeans to produce a hot beverage which caused a pleasant drowsiness in the consumer. As they supped their steaming-hot drinks carefully, Loic asked Jaster about his background, and about his icy winterbound homeplanet.

 

‘What’s to tell,’ said Jaster, dreamily, as he prepared to doze, ‘I was born a prince of the planet Csilla, of the Royal House of Elgoid. My home is a snowball floating in space, a frigid freezing world of the Unknown Regions. When I was the edge of seventeen years old, I wasn’t expecting to inherit the crown for at least another few decades, my father was only in his twenties when I had been born, he was still young-ish and healthy when he died, seventeen years later, he had a few more decades rule in him yet.’

 

'How did he die?' Asked Loic. Jaster looked wistfully at the firelight, flashing flames cavorted in his black pupils as the eyes remembered, they peered sightlessly back into the crawling mists of his memories.

 

‘My father died unexpectedly, his royal barge crashed one day, a malfunction they said, no suspicious circumstances. Suddenly the crown was thrust upon me, I was never suited to it, I never wanted to rule, I just wanted to travel the galaxy, explore distant planets and moons. No, my two younger brothers were much more suited to the position, they craved it in fact, but we couldn’t change centuries of tradition, so I had to accept the responsibility.’ He paused to flick a branch onto the fire and drain the last of his nightcap.

 

‘So I left, I came here, and that’s that. I’m much happier here than I would’ve been there, without a doubt, they can keep their kilted kings and crumbling castles, I prefer this, it’s a lot warmer for a start, and certainly a lot less responsibility!’ He gestured around him to the darkening wilderness of the surrounding forests and mountains.

 

They spent some time gazing at the stars which pinpricked into view in the night sky one-by-one. Loic watched a small point of distant light, a pale blue dot, become visible, in a faraway galaxy, and he turned to Jaster and asked, ‘do you think there are galaxies out there where evil doesn’t exist? I mean, do you think other galaxies have evils as bad as the Empire in them?’

 

‘Evil must exist, there cannot be light without dark.’

 

‘I think if people, evil people, like the Empire, genocidal despots, destroyers-of-worlds and the ilk… If those people imbibed some of that dimeth…erm, stuff, you found, they couldn’t remain on the dark side, not in the face of such an enlightening, beautiful, spiritually-awakening journey, could they?’

 

‘Maybe,’ mused Jaster, ‘the ego is a very powerful thing.’

 

‘But what about a superstrong dose, like many times what we took that night, when it made us force-sensitive, what would happen if…’

 

Loic was roused from his meditative remembering as a door whoosed open and Bossk entered the cargohold, his foul stench preceded him. Paying no heed to the smuggler he approached the cobalt-skinned Maax, who was filing his long nails with an air of superiority, an unusual attitude to have around one