Loic Monerat & The Lizard Brain Spice Smuggling Syndicate, Chris Herron, Greg Provan [drm ebook reader txt] 📗

of the dying, burned, and maimed. The fighting would soon find its way into the maze of passageways leading from the hall – it was time to introduce the weaponised hallucinogen. He hurled a grenade down into the arena where many were seeking to flee the crossfire, and another into a huddle of mercenaries who had dug themselves in and were sniping Okkra’s disorganised guards. He knew Vries was placed at the back of the hall in a booth – it was he who would flush out the Trandoshan renegades with grenades of his own. As terror engulfed their feeble serpent minds Vries would liquidate them with ease.

 

A laser hit the column from which he kept cover, the blast punched a hole through the ancient rune-etched stone. The shot had come from the air – pesky winged aliens adding to the disarray. He replied with his blaster, his precise aim dropping the creatures to land upon the heads of the beastly mercenaries below. He looked over to the human dangling helplessly from the wall. The force field should be down any moment. The crazed pandemonium born from psychotomimetic shock would be the perfect veil to mask his movements. He risked a glance from behind the column – the blaster fire had begun to lessen - the gas was taking affect.

 

The air hung heavy with the stench of burned flesh, the winged creatures that remained had ingested the hallucinogen – one flew right into a pillar at break-neck speed, others flapped to the ground confused. Some of the mercenaries ran into the archways seeking safety in shadows. Others grappled with one another, their fractured drug-crazed minds turning friend to foe.

Loic had watched the bedlam unfold. Laser blasts had peppered the forcefield, ceaselessly streaming sparks into the air. Okkra had been wounded but not mortally – a gaggle of lickspittles fawned over his girthsome form, seeing to his wounds. Obscenely, the Hutt still fed. He was trying to wriggle to-and-fro – surely the obstinate Hutt realised it was time to flee – he could not hide behind the forcefield forever. It was then Loic realised that Okkra was in too much pain to move unaided. From a secret passageway directly behind his throne appeared several of the wolf-faced guards who had greeted them so affectionately outside the temple. It took all their brute force to slide Okkra’s cumbrous frame even a few feet.

 

The crime lord squealed in pain at each pull and prod, his hide weeping from burning lacerations, the side of his face mangled by blaster-fire. A series of blaster shots came from the tunnel leading to the entrance ramp. From the shadowed torch-flickering recess behind a pillar, Loic espied one of the Chiss emissaries. He took aim at the flying creatures that buzzed hither-and-tither, as he ducked behind the pillar once more his eyes moved upwards to Loic. It was then that Loic knew that the three Chiss were a plant. There was no other reason the blue-skinned man would be studying Loic so closely – why else would a random prisoner warrant such attention? But with Loic masked as he was, all he could do was nod his head to one side to warn the Chiss what was sneaking up behind him – a Shistavanen – the one Bossk had beaten bloody…

 

Some instinct made the Chiss turn just as the beastly thing pounced, but it was upon him – razor sharp claws digging into his face, fangs darting towards his throat. In desperation the Chiss fired his blaster at close range, the laser exploded through the Shitavanen’s side. It howled as it fell but pulled the Chiss down with it, still trying to savage him with its fangs. Loic’s gaze was pulled from the pair by a pain-wracked groan from Okkra. The Hutt’s eyes bulged for a briefest of heartbeats, the cavernous feckless mouth agape, horror stricken.

 

For what Okkra knew Loic did not, that a device had been activated deep in his bloated olive-green belly. Okkra exploded! The Hutt’s great mass came apart in a blinding flash. A grisly-blistering shockwave of searing heat washed over the smuggler, singing his skin raw. When he could at last chance opening his eyes, Okkra was no more but frazzling remains sprayed every which way.

 

The forcefield buzzed angrily as innards and bile and gore frazzled up and down its length. The Shistavanen guards had died with their employer, their body parts scattered around as though a mad hulking Rancor had torn them to shreds. Some of the bilious filth from Okkra’s immolation had splattered the smuggler – stomach acids and filth tormenting his exposed flesh.

 

Then the low thrum of the forcefield ceased, and a tide of festering, smouldering gore slopped to the floor. Loic turned his desperate gaze back to the Chiss – he had slayed the Shistavenen, but at what cost? Flesh hung from his mauled bloody face, claw marks covered his head and neck. One eye was awash with blood, but he determinedly crawled towards Loic, still intent on executing his mission.

 

Bossk picked out head shots from his nest of flames. Drozsk and Gragg were about fifty paces ahead, to the left and right of the hall respectively, also firing from cover. Okkra had survived but was wounded. Bossk observed through the rifle scope lupine-faced bodyguards trying to drag their master to safety. The forcefield had taken a battering, in parts it shimmered and faded. It would fail, and Bossk’s next head shot would be Okkra’s forehead.

 

A movement to his side caught his keen reptilian gaze, a furtive shift in a darkened booth. Before Bossk could react, a gloved hand rolled two grenades from the shadows towards his kinsmen. Hued smoke erupted from the devices. It was too late to warn his allies, but he turned his rifle towards the booth and waited. A masked Chiss slid from the shadows, blaster in hand, he took aim at Gragg, but Bossk fired first and the Chiss was blown back into the booth with a hole in his back. Accursed Chiss! Gragg was on all fours and Drozsk was stumbling against the wall, both disorientated by whatever noxious substance the grenades had ejected.

 

There was a great boom at Okkra’s end of the hall. When the smoke cleared Bossk realised, with astonishment, Okkra was no more. Perhaps a grenade launcher had found its way through a gap in the forcefield. No time to ponder. Okkra had been eliminated, his guardsmen killed with him.

 

Throughout the hall madness ensued, Bossk watched the remaining survivors who had seemingly lost their minds, some darted in random directions, others clawed at their own faces blinding themselves in fits of lunacy, others writhed on the floor heedless of the dangers surrounding them. A vague, peculiarly-familiar stench floated into his nostrils – and with it, the alien emotion of fear. He had been poisoned with the same airborne substance that had afflicted his fellow Trandoshans!

 

His vision swam in warped mutation – where Okkra’s throne had been, now swirled a coruscating singularity – a black hole! And it wanted Bossk’s soul. It called to him telepathically in a malevolent alien dialect. It could not be disobeyed! Bossk shambled forth, his rifle forgotten. He spasmed, his back arching, his gaze now heavenward. There was no longer a ceiling above him but rather a sanity-shattering sight. Against the nebula-clustered backdrop of space loomed a giant Trandoshan face, coronas burned round its deathless eyes, yellow blood dripped from its elongated, gore-flecked fangs, excrescences of crackling unreality shimmered round the titan’s form.

 

Bossk was mewling and quivering, for it was Skargoz’ak – The Trandoshan God of Death. He had come for him – come to claim Bossk’s cowardly soul because he was unworthy. A great clawed grasp reached down from the heavens, the scaled arm wreathed in purple flame. Bossk scrambled away in terror, but in his blind panic he ran back into the flaming bar. Wood splintered as his great frame crashed through the erstwhile serving area. Flame and heat engulfed him, but with the heat came a kernel of clarity – for the stench was familiar to him for a reason – he had tasted it before. Yes, yes…

 

Zuckuss, the insectoid, appeared from the mist, dragging his bounty – a Jedi. Fearsome foes it was said, capable of dark thaumaturgical abilities. ‘They can break into your mind – control you!’ Zuckuss had warned him in the Mist Hunter cockpit.

 

It had been a joint venture. Even the best bounty hunters had to team up from time to time depending on foe. But Bossk much preferred working alone. Usually, if he needed extra muscle, he would use other members of his own race. He had to admit though, the enigmatic Gand would make a lethal enemy. Even one as grudging as Bossk had to afford this strange individual respect.

 

Their quarry – the Jedi – was able to manipulate a sorcerous power to heighten her senses and abilities. Zuckass explained that he too was sensitive to that power - to a smaller degree, but it would be enough help them snare the Jedi.

 

Bossk flushed out the prey with powerful explosives and Zuckass moved through the mist like a wraith. It was the Dark Lord Darth Vader himself who had put up the reward, a substantial bounty. The wounded Jedi had cowered in a warren of caves and tunnels. Bossk covered the mountainside with detonators, blew all exits except one. When the Jedi had no choice left, she came out fighting, her fiery sword singing in the air. But Zuckass had been waiting, and he brought the mist with him. Even the Jedi could not focus shrouded in a hallucinogenic mist summoned by the Gand. She fought with her own mind leaving no reserves of lucidity to face her hunters.

 

Zuckass had zapped her with a stun beam. He dragged her back to the Mist Hunter where Bossk was waiting – beyond the miasma of diabolic mist. But as they made their long journey back to Vader, Bossk had slept, and his dreams were troubled. Nightmares, of the most visceral unsettling nature imaginable, he near lost his mind. Zukkus explained that Bossk had inadvertently ingested miniscule amounts of the substance lost in the eddies of the winds. Bossk did not want to imagine what mental horrors the Jedi must have endured as enveloped in the mist as she was.

 

‘You are either an agent of terror or a victim of terror. I am terror given form.’ The mysterious Gand stood over Bossk’s prone form observing him from unreadable compound eyes, its voice grated, the insect mouth hidden by a circular respirator mask. Bossk realised that with ease the creature could eliminate him and take the bounty for himself. Vader would not care if only one of them made it back, so long as he had his prize. Bossk realised guiltily it is what he would have done had the tables been turned. Bossk despised weakness – only strength held sway in Trandoshan society. Yet this realisation galled him as he wrestled with his own fear. Zuckass unscrewed his respirator and let it fall to the floor, the insectoid mouth revealed, a hole of spiky barbs and mandibles. Mist began to form as though exuding from the Gand himself. And with the mist came fresh horrors flashing through Bossk’s mind.

 

‘No,’ Bossk begged, ‘not more.’

 

‘You must conquer your fear. I am terror. Where I walk terror walks. You are an agent of terror or its victim. Conquer terror – become terror, or forever you will be its victim. What are you Bossk, a slave to terror, or its right hand?’

For the first time Bossk realised he had been drugged, the effects were so potent that his sanity and sense-of-self had hung by a cobweb. But the knowledge of what he had experienced on the Mist Hunter before gave him resolve. He had mastered his fear then, with the tutelage of the enigmatic Gand. He looked to the heavens – the Death God was