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

Krang dropped in on a jetpack, and before the lousy guards could react, he had felled the first one with a meaty forearm blow and gashed the second’s flabby throat with a flashing talon, its vomit-green blood gushed all over its corpulent belly. The second two tusk-faced soldiers raised their vibrolances, but the tank-like Trandoshan brushed this meagre weaponry aside. He speared an eyeball with a pointed claw, penetrating a vapid pig-brain, flicking a twitching carcass aside, instant death. No blasters yet, too noisy, stealth was still the watchword.

Trandoshans believed you could imbibe the power of your enemies by imbuing yourself with their blood. There was nothing to be had from a gormless gaggle of gammon, but the snake he had devoured in a sacred ceremony at sunset, he believed would give him the speed of a serpent. Maybe so, because the time in which he dispatched of the four armoured bouncers couldn’t have been more than ten seconds at the most.

A virtuoso of violent velocity in peak flow, vivified by the vanquishment of his victims. The final guard had made the mistake of cowering, and the callous reptile warlord caved his thick skull in with his fallen companion’s helmet, it only took one hefty overhand blow. Krang surveyed the wreckage. Just in case the first one he felled woke back up, he stuck the point of its own lance in its jugular and gladly left it burbling. Bossk’s uncle licked his lips, gnashed his needlelike teeth, delighting in the kill.

He stashed his boosterpack neath a bundle of oil-rags, and having removed one sentry’s cardkey, he unlocked the rooftop doorway of the golden tower and was inside. The four pig-creatures lay at their post, firepit burning, their blood mingling into one great ghastly puddle, gruesomely reflecting argent light from Florrum’s singular moon.

Inside the doorway, after a short winding staircase, Krang encountered a Hutt Snake Droid. The startled serpentine robot he swiftly beheaded with his club, before it could make a move, he had dealt with those droids before, antiquated as they were, he knew their weak-points, where to strike them.

The lizard slithered further down into the slug’s lair, with the taste of blood in his mouth and the scent of prey in his flaring nostrils. A barbaric euphoria pulsated through his battle-hardened old frame and awoke a dragon inside, long-dormant. He paid no heed to hieroglyphs which flashed by. He stalked inwards like a silent storm infiltrating the ship’s belowdecks.

Krang had done exactly as his nephew had asked, he had went outside the clan to employ two unrelated Trandoshans. So as not to be connected to the family in any way when they weaselled their way into Okkra’s confidence a while ago. A few successful bounties delivered, and they were Okkra’s new favourite hunters, fickle as the Hutt was. Gragg and Drozsk were young Trandoshans, but they were strong, supple, ruthless, keen-minded, ambitious – all the qualities that make a great future clan leader. Plus, they have the sprightliness of youth on their side, thought Krang, as an old injury in his elbow flared up out of nowhere, perhaps recoiling from the prospect of imminent battle. He cursed the weakness and plodded on, ignoring his age, which groaned at him, like the atavistic walls that surrounded him groaned with earth and history, both sagging under their weight.

He rounded a corner and almost collided with a feathered Talortai. He had not seen one of those in a long time! Maybe it would have once been a formidable opponent at one time, but this one was old and frail, and missing a limb. It was little effort to smother the creature’s beak and suffocate it. Krang stared hard and fiercely into its panic-stricken birdlike eyes as it kicked and struggled. The reptilian strength of the Trandoshan was too much for the aged brittle being. Krang hurried proceedings along by gripping the beak tighter and bending the neck until he heard the satisfying pop and crunch of its vertebrae fragmenting. The old Talortai slumped against the wall, its dead eyes stared into infinity, its neck at  a jagged angle - it had seen its last sunset. Nothing to be gained from the knave, so Krang moved on.

Bossk had done the Cradossk family proud, he was probably the most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy, him and that Mandalorian who wouldn’t last twelve parsecs in a straight-up fight with his nephew. Krang had seen that boy manhandle wookies like they were ewoks! Krang fancied even he himself, in his prime, might have been surpassed by his nephew in hand-to-hand combat, though it had never been tested obviously, and he would never admit that suspicion to anyone, ever.

Yes, they could rely on the two younglings, Gragg and Drozsk, especially with Bossk alongside them. Still, four Trandoshans against a whole Hutt menagerie was madness, even to ones as fearless as the Cradossks. But Krang recalled the family motto, and its coat of arms with the lizard devouring the snake. The first rule of the Cradossk Clan is ‘don’t enter a battle unless you know you can win’. Which is why Krang had also hired some Geonosian gunslingers and some extremely dangerous Colicoid mercenaries to be in place when the time came.

As the ancient Trandoshan made his way down the descending tunnel, senses alert and blaster poised, the sound of Okkra’s celebrations faded into hearing, although he had smelled it before he heard it; the tantalising perfume of spilled blood and the unmistakeable foetor of death. Krang checked his weapons, adjusted his armour, hugged the wall, and advanced – natural slit-eyed nightvision served him well in these unlit sections of the tunnels.

Two measly Noghri protected the torchlit door to the junction that led to the amphitheatre. Easy pickings, thought Krang, and crept forward, a black lizard in the dark shadows, stealthy, deadly. He just had to dispatch of these two and then wait for the inevitable boom sound, which would be his signal to move in.

The dishevelled wookie slave, named Katakkaa, had beaten off an Iktotchi and a Dug so far. The sneaky Dug had given him the runaround, tired him out, then pounced. It had been beating him half-to-death with its powerful hind legs when he mustered one last ounce of savage strength, and he ripped those offending limbs from their sockets. Bastard.

Hair matted with blood, eyes filled with haunted despair, the wookie  now lay in a corner and licked its wounds. The next combatant was prodded into the pit, and now the wookie faced the ultimate indignation; he would have to betray his own kind. Another wookie was lined up against him; older, grey-haired, but fresh - their captors sniggered.  Katakkaa was beaten and bloody, he didn’t fancy his chances against the elder kin. The appearance of Bossk and a bounty had caused a welcome distraction momentarily, but now all eyes were back on the two wookies, reluctant to participate, but being prodded forward by spears clutched by impatient pitmasters, and observed with avaricious eyes from the surrounding spectators.

…Click. Nothing. Bossk pressed the device again. Click. Nothing. What the frag!? Splenetic Bossk snarled and checked the device to ensure it was primed correctly, it was. Drat! It was either a dud, or it had been removed. But it couldn’t possibly have been removed, the smuggler was locked in the cell. Unless… There was one way it could have been removed - if he had received help. And the only person who…

Bossk’s malevolent eyes flitted round the miniature coliseum for the blue skinned bastard. He saw only the Chiss who had come in separate. He wondered if they were associates. A female and two males. They had presented the Hutt lord with a gift of a birthday cake, made from a Hutt favourite, Kowakian crumbcake, as well as a pricelessly-sized bar of precious chromium, which had lit up in the druglord’s bulging eyes as his tail waggled enthusiastically, slapping off the dusty ground, thud, thud, thud. Like a fucking dog. The Chiss newcomers had then moved to an alcove and Bossk could see no sign whatsoever of that dratted Maax.

Screw it. Maybe the bomb was a dud. He could still go ahead with the plan. The explosive had only been an appetiser to the main course, and an unplanned one at that, an unexpected gift from Sarkraa. The Trandoshan had enough explosives about his person to bring down a battleship, he was only robbed of the joy of detonating that smuggler and Okkra together, but his strategy plan was unaffected.

Bossk glanced at Monerat where he hung melancholy and mangled like a grisly ornament on Okkra’s wall. The smuggler did not meet his gaze, unconscious again maybe, weak humanoid. Bossk gave the signal to Gragg and Drozsk, an imperceptible flick of the tongue, but in their own lizard language it spoke volumes, and they knew what to do.

Orange-scaled Drozsk, in his custom chainmail vest and Trandoshan chainmail head-covering, flicked another morsel of spiced Karkan Ribene at his mouth where his tongue flashed out and caught it, devouring it. He had enormous fangs for his species, and they were flaxen, tipped with a red tinge. He stood watching the squirming, slime-gored crimelord Okkra with undisguised disgust in his green eyes. His brother Gragg lounged a few paces from him, he was monitoring Bossk, waiting for the signal. Gragg was well-built, a hulking muscular dinosaur, a spiked back, his scales gleamed iridescently in the flaming-corpse-lit arena, Gragg’s muscles swelled with excitement at the prospect of bloodshed.

Bossk’s tongue tasted the air and the sign language was clear, now. Their orders were to eliminate Okkra first-and-foremost, cut the head off the snake before it has a chance to bite and administer its venom, then they could deal with the fallout. Meantime, Bossk, Krang, and some hired-geeks, would be covering their scaly hides. Drozsk knew his brother had received the signal because he saw Gragg activating his weapon and at that precise second Drozsk was already pulling his own trigger, firing upon a surprised Okkra…

…The first scarlet lick of laserfire took Okkra across the face, permanently disfiguring him. The second volley, from Gragg, smashed into his throat, cutting his wails off midsentence. The third round came simultaneously from both brothers and peppered the Hutt’s chest and bulbous, ballooned belly. Still, this was not enough! It took a lot to penetrate a Hutt’s thick hide with all that lard - the next barrage however would finish him off. Gragg and Drozsk primed their weapons, targeted the Hutt’s eyes, discharged -  the killshot.

Or it would have been, but something unexpected happened, either the Hutt, or one of his cronies, had activated a secret emergency trigger. A blue, see-through, forcefield arose and surrounded the Hutt in a glowing nimbus of bombproof, blasterproof, laserlight - impenetrable. The Hutt was wounded, but not so badly it didn’t manage a defiant cackle as the lethal laserfire that would have ended the slug’s life glanced harmlessly off the corona encircling him and frittered out.

Loic, as he often did in times of great pain and stress, had lost consciousness. Hanging, once again, pathetically, on a wall. In a hypnogogic fantasy and half-waking reverie, he was roused from his narcolepsy by the noise of blasters. The light of the lasers had blinded his eyes, closed though they were, as they shot past and slammed into the Hutt’s thick, sand-coloured hide, scorching it, lacerating it. The smell of singed flesh invaded Loic’s mask, the flash left sparkling fractals behind his eyelids.

Sightless, he heard more blasterfire, and then suddenly everything became muffled. When his vision unblurred he was wreathed in a glowing blue light. He decided he must have died. But then he heard Okkra, choking, gurgling, forcing laughter, coughing-up blood, and he realised he was still in hell. He had however, been spared some of the carnage unfolding outside the forcefield.

The electrical protective barrier had encased Okkra and everything in his general vicinity, and that had