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

Krang had been on stakeout monitoring the Hutt for the past two nights, he had a fairly accurate bodycount of the place’s occupants in his head, maybe a hundred, or slightly less, were currently inside. He sat back and waited patiently, observing, with a stillness rarely achieved by anything other than a lizard stalking prey. The day faded to black quite suddenly, as the last of the sunset’s lingering colours leeched from the sky and the stygian reptile blended into the shadows seamlessly.

Inside the venue, Loic was being led down a cramped entry corridor lit by a string of electric bulbs overhead. The stench and bulk of Bossk created a wall in front of him, and Maax sleeked behind them, his Aeiensilk robes whispering, as they entered Okkra’s temporary desert realm. Two wolflike Shistavanen led the way; balls of scraggly black fur adorned with red scars, bulging muscles, and bristling with teeth and claws, and packing a musk almost as overpowering as the Trandoshan’s in these close quarters.

The tension was palpable, not least for Loic, who had been passed around Hutts lately like the last hit left in a spiceden full of desperate junkies. His own gnawing craving for spice had somewhat been drowned by the more pressing matters of the pain he was in, and the bleakness of his current situation - but he would still take a hit right now, he would love a hit at this moment, it might numb him to the reality of his terrible fate.

Still, there was optimism, maybe this Chiss could pull it off for him. If Jaster trusted him then Loic trusted him. The devil-faced smuggler reflected on his rotten luck of the last forty-eight hours and whether it was about to change for the better or the worse. Had it been forty-eight hours? He couldn’t tell, he had no way of knowing how long he had been unconscious on the Hound’s Tooth the first time, or how long he had been anaesthetised during his surgery at Sarkraa’s, or how long he had been out on the return journey, when the Chiss had guided him in removing the bomb. He didn’t want to think about it, but the memory vomited itself into the basin of his thoughts in disturbing vivid technicolour.

‘This is going to hurt, but I did bring something that might help.’ Maax tossed a small brown leaf wrapped in paper through the gaps in the vibrobars and Loic took it in cupped hands.

‘What is this?’

‘A plant, from my homeplanet, known to dull pain. Chew it for a half a minute, spit it out, count to thirty, then you should feel a numbness spreading through you.’ Drugbent Loic didn’t have to be told twice to consume a narcotic, and he did exactly as he was instructed. After a couple of minutes, a tingling sensation was propagating through his body and then a prickly numbness took hold.

‘Right,’ instructed the Chiss, ‘now listen very carefully, you need to quickly open the cut and, without hesitating, you must reach inside, feel around, locate the device, and slowly remove it, very slowly. And then you must use the tool to cauterise and stitch yourself, but you must act quickly, for a variety of reasons; bloodloss, the painkiller doesn’t last long, or Bossk might…’

‘Right, right, okay, I get it, thanks,’ said Loic, testily. He wanted to get this over with, he wasn’t planning on dilly-dallying, he didn’t relish the prospect of self-surgery, but he relished the prospect of having an explosive in his guts even less, particularly when the detonator was hooked up to an angry Trandoshan! He flicked the tool on and braced himself. Its gossamer-thin orange laser opened his surgical wound neatly, with a hiss and a tendril of smoke, producing a small gulley of red blood which trickled over the smuggler’s trembling hands.

Though the plant medicine was masking most of the pain, the sight of it still made Loic almost pass out, he fought against the dizziness and with a deep breath managed to stay conscious. Noting that the power light was flashing on the gadget, indicating it was running out of charge, he had to act fast, faster!

He plunged his probing fingers into the squelching laceration, and he grimaced and grunted and sweated as he prodded around inside, blood bubbled out and formed a pink froth. The Chiss watched, almost unemotional, but Loic thought he saw a slight twitch in that steely cerulean expression now and then.

After half a minute he located the small-but-powerful marble-sized explosive and, taking a deep breath, he pulled it free. He blacked-out for a nanosecond, but the vibrobars quickly shocked him back awake as he drooped over. Clearing his groggy head with a shake, he switched the tool’s operating mode and rapidly cauterised the gash, sealing the blood in. Luckily, Loic’s fresh stains simply blended in with the already bloodsoaked floor of his tiny circular cell, unnoticeable after a few minutes drying. The gizmo fired several stitches in to Loic’s stomach, he prayed to whatever gods were listening that it didn’t run out of power before completing the job, wincing with every suture going in.

The very second Loic had put the last stitch in, he lost consciousness, remaining upright and crosslegged, because of the electric bars, but out-cold nonetheless. So, it was up to the Chiss to slide his long, clever fingers through, and retrieve the tool and the liberated bomb. He stashed these things in his robes, washed his hands of Loic’s blood, and returned to the stool, where he meditated, preparing himself for the turbulent task ahead, focusing his energies, relaxing his tense muscles.

Loic could feel the stitches in his stomach stinging and straining as he was briskly propelled through Okkra’s underground tunnel. How long have I been without a blaster!? He found himself wondering. Probably the longest time ever in his life! He had been born with a blaster in his hand, his dad may have failed to fashion Loic into a soldier, but he did mould a perfect marksman.

The smuggler from Coruscant felt a pang as he remembered the custom blaster, inherited from his dead father, which he had lost gambling, what seemed like a lifetime ago now, but was only a few nights. He had obtained a blaster very briefly in Sarkraa’s with Buru, but Bossk had stymied that rather quickly. It seemed every turn Loic tried to make that treacherous Trandoshan was there to block his way, all the way back to training that crossbow on Okkra on Eriadu. If only he’d made that shot, if only Bossk hadn’t found him. How had he known I was there!? Someone must have informed him somehow. Loic had no more time to ponder this as Okkra’s goat-faced majordomo appeared at the end of the steep entrance tunnel.

Loic recognised the species immediately, an Abednedo. A common humanoid mammalian species. It had an elongated head with protruding eyes at either side, dangling mouth tendrils that flapped and wriggled when it spoke, and two slitted fleshy nostrils that huffed and snorted, dribbling mucus constantly. This one’s flesh was a tan colour, his scraggly head hair a wintry grey. He was dressed in the customary religious garb of his species; brown robes, khaki cloak, and open-toed boots from which three bulbous toes protruded. On the majordomo’s head he wore the traditional fez of his kind, and in his bony hand he clutched an electroripper staff. The Abednedo approached the Chiss and they both bowed to one another respectfully.

Like any mafia, the Hutt clan had to have their rules, laws, and governance, to prevent it from descending into chaos. Though the Hutts squabbled a lot, they did answer to the Hutt Council, and they more-often-than-not respected their own personal laws, beliefs, and codes of conduct, even if they had no regard whatsoever for any other species’ similar traditions. One golden rule was nobody fucked with a Hutt’s majordomo. These people were appointed positions of great power, they were considered to be the ambassador of their chief, the Voice of God so-to-speak, and could even negotiate on their master’s behalf. A slight against a Hutt’s majordomo was an insult against that Hutt themself, those who were assigned this influential position were treated gingerly, and with the greatest respect, at all times.

There wasn’t much discussion, the majordomos paid their respect to one another and then they were all guided into a huge hallway, which acted as a foyer, and told to wait there with the Shistavanen. As always in times of imminent death, for some reason, Loic’s mind focused intensely on the minutiae. He stared upwards at the spacious room’s grand, ancient designs which flowed across the walls in veins of gold, describing mystical journeys of rebirth and resurrection it seemed.

From the outside, Okkra’s abode had just looked like some steep cliffs and a sandy plateau with some obscure intermittent hieroglyphs here and there. Inside however, once through the roughly-hewn earthy tunnel, was a completely different story. Whatever race had occupied this space in previous millennia had obviously venerated it as some sort of sacrosanct area, perhaps a temple of some kind, perhaps a palace for initiation ceremonies, something special anyway, because the architecture was truly divine.

Similar in its grandeur to the pyramid Loic had seen on Draethos, it had the same kind of attention to detail and mathematical preciseness, but a completely different style. Whoever had occupied this complex had obviously been obsessed with, maybe worshipped, a species called the Columi, long extinct, but which Loic recognised the bug-eyed, large-brained, short-bodied characteristics of from his history studies. In the sculptures adorning the walls of Okkra’s dwelling the Columi’s orb-like gaze stared down from every corner and crevice, carved from stone, but with gemlike eyeballs that felt like they were really watching you. Lichen-covered goddesses adorned mighty pillars that supported an ornately-painted ceiling, now chipped and worn and partly-collapsed, but still radiant in its splendour and cosmic in its scope.

Carvings of celestial Twi’lek dancers lined the walls, insects and lizards were sporadically sculpted into the designs too, as well as creatures Loic did not recognise, possibly native to Florrum. He gawped through his mask at giant, stone-carved, two-headed serpents which coiled round the columns, and strange six-legged, triple-humped beasts etched into mosaics, the frescoes of which had long-since fragmented and left only bits and pieces of imagery behind. Everywhere were hieroglyphs in a dead language which probably nobody alive today could decipher. Sometimes Loic could make out the shape of saucerlike starships among the symbols, and sometimes humanoid sticklike figures, a few of the glyphs resembled constellations or starcharts which were familiar to him, but nothing else was recognisable, just obscure alien symbols.

In the distance, Okkra’s party was in full swing, they could hear it, extremely muffled through the walls which were thick and solid, so nothing specific could be made out - just the inkling of some great feast or celebration somewhere in the distance - murmurs and vibrations. Bossk stood and eyed the Shistavanen ominously, and they returned the gesture. They were not happy with Bossk’s treatment of their packleader, but they would not attack a consort of another Hutt’s majordomo without permission from their own commander, and certainly not when that consort is the fearsome, famed bounty hunter Bossk Craddosk.

Maax, as usual, seemed unphased, he was calmly inspecting the statues of a pair of Columi, depicted holding bowls on their large round heads, with apparent keen interest; but he was obviously acutely aware of his surroundings, the Chiss had that aura of omniscience somehow. The bowl-headed statues he inspected looked like they had been designed to carry fresh water into the underground tunnels at some point long ago, before this entire planet dried up into one big giant dustbowl.

Loic caught a glance of himself in a cracked and cobwebbed reflecting surface, what a miserable sight he was to himself. His Correlian trousers and his expensive boots had held out well, scraped and torn but