Tresher scar

A medium sized shuttle descended through the cloud cover that surrounded the planet of Tinallis. The gray shuttle was stubby and bulky, though it was aerodynamic enough to not crash and burn while it made the descent. The winds buffeted it and forced the pilot to pay attention lest it shift out of control and prove the dangers of defying gravity.

From within the cockpit, Lasitor Icine smiled broadly and glanced over at his copilot.

“See? I told you I could handle this with no problems.”

The older man who sat in the copilot seat shot a glance back at the young man that wore the same kind of black fatigues and combat armor he had. Both sported a patch on the upper right arm, an uneven crimson ring that symbolized a star going supernova. It was the symbol of the Velir’s Nova, a mercenary band.

“How about you say that after we land? Remember what happened the last time?”

The young, black spiky haired pilot rolled his eyes, and then strained to bring the shuttle back under control after turbulence knocked the nose of the shuttle down and starboard. Lasitor grinned as he forced the shuttle back on course. His blue eyes sparkled at his success.

“If you were focused, you wouldn’t have had to strain; you would have felt the shift and adjusted then when the nose was still close enough to where it was to begin with.”

Lasitor sighed at the retort. It seemed like no matter how much he tried to impress his mentor Rasik, he always missed something.

The rest of the descent was in silence, as Lasitor tried to do as instructed and focus on flying. They shut down the engines and moved out of the cockpit and to the back of the shuttle where their cargo was at.

An elderly man in a black suit and pants marched to them as soon as the door to the cargo bay opened up.

“This is an outrage! We have valuable, expensive equipment here, and your reckless piloting could have damaged them! We would have had to abort this entire expedition if we couldn’t use them!”

Rasik folded his arms over his chest and stared down at the smaller man.

“And are they damaged?”

The corner of the elder man’s mouth twitched.

“No.”

Rasik smiled.

“Well, then there’s nothing to complain about. We got you, your people, and your equipment here in one piece as we said. You were the one that said the wind was unpredictable and required skilled pilots, which was why you didn’t want to use someone from the University. Right, Dr. Gibson?”

Dr. Gibson turned crimson in anger, but stalked off to his biology team to direct them in unloading everything and setting up camp. Rasik threw an arm around Lasitor’s neck and led him away from the biologists as they lowered the boarding ramp and got to work. They moved out of the cargo bay and deeper into the shuttle.

Rasik smirked at Lasitor.

“He’s mostly annoyed at how he was forced to use us. The University agreed to sponsor the expedition, but only if they were given an armed escort. Tinallis isn’t a planet a human would want to go to unarmed. Not if the human wanted to survive anyways. There are a lot of predators and natural hazards out there. Still, biologists can go there and find something new and name it. The main reason Dr. Gibson wants to go, to be famous for finding a new species of whatever he can find. Don’t let his comment about your piloting bother you. You did well.”

Lasitor grinned back at Rasik.

“Yeah, I know I did great.”

Rasik smiled and shook his head ruefully.

“That pride of yours is going to get you in deep trouble someday.”

Lasitor just laughed off the comment and nodded back to the biologists.

“So, should we go ahead and help them arrange their camp before they allow a predator to just walk in and make meals out of everyone?”

Rasik chuckled, and his blue eyes showed his merriment.

“Sure, since getting eaten would be a great start to any expedition.”

He saw the smirk that appeared on Lasitor’s face and shook his head.

“Kids… all you think about is sex.”

Lasitor laughed and the two made their way off the shuttle.



The eight person team of biologists had arranged their tents in a loose circle, with the equipment in the middle of the encampment, a few meters away from the edge of the rainforest they had set down next to. After some harassing and verbal jabs from Rasik, the camp was reversed, with the equipment on the outside and the tents in the inner circle.

Lasitor leaned back against the landing gear of the shuttle and rested his hands behind his head. His heavy blaster rifle laid on his lap, the barrel pointed at the ground. A smirk appeared on his lips as he remembered the way Rasik made Dr. Gibson look like a fool.

“The University said we would handle everything pertaining to the defense of the research team. Campsite placement would fall under such a category.”

Lasitor chuckled to himself and closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, he found the good biologist stood before him. Dr. Gibson tapped his left foot, and his arms were crossed while his right fingers tapped against his left bicep. The annoyance he felt was clearly written on his face, and the good biologist used all of it on the young spiky haired man before him.

“What are you doing loafing around here? There are plenty of things that still need to get done. Why don’t you go help instead of sitting around sleeping?”

Lasitor shook his head and waved lazily with his left hand at the campsite.

“What is there to do? The only thing that’s getting done right now is dinner. There are plenty of people assisting that, and I suck at cooking anyways.”

He put his hand back behind his head and closed his eyes, dismissing the old man’s presence. Dr. Gibson stomped forward and glared further at Lasitor.

“You’re supposed to be watching over us, making sure nothing will cause us harm. That’s what your master is doing-”

The elder man was stopped in midsentence when Lasitor popped up his head, opened his eyes, and grabbed his blaster rifle. He pointed the weapon at the biologist, and the biologist stepped back in surprise at the anger and fury in the young man’s eyes.

“He is not my master. He’s my instructor. Don’t call me a slave. Ever.”

The biologist raised his hands and stumbled on his words in an attempt to apologize. Lasitor just scoffed and lowered the weapon before he turned his head away and told Dr. Gibson to leave. The good biologist wasted no time and retreated from Lasitor.

Several minutes later, he was still angry at the comment. Someone close by cleared their throat, and Lasitor ignored them. The person cleared their throat again, and Lasitor ground his teeth together.

“What?”

“You do realize that this is going to be a long mission if we can’t get along with the client, right?”

Lasitor opened his eyes and turned to see Rasik looking down at him. Lasitor raised an eyebrow.

“You aren’t doing that great with him, and he took it out on me, so why should I care if he ain’t happy?”

Rasik sighed and sat on his haunches.

“Just because things aren’t going so smoothly now doesn’t mean it will be that way later on. I’m letting him know the boundaries now so we won’t clash in the future. I’ve let him decide where we’ll be going, and consulted him about how far we’ll be out. It’s give and take.”

Lasitor remained quiet after Rasik was finished. Intellectually, he knew that both sides had to be in agreement. However, he felt that Dr. Gibson was an idiot and couldn’t make a plan to the refresher, much less an expedition. His grip on the blaster rifle tightened as he refused to accept the idea that he’d have to listen to that idiot.

“You’d be far better at leading this thing than that moron.”

Rasik chuckled and shook his head.

“I’m not a biologist. My knowledge doesn’t really extend into that field. Gibson is the expert, and so it’s mostly up to him.”

Rasik got up and extended his hand to his partner. Lasitor looked at it for two seconds before he took it. The larger, older man pulled him up onto his feet. Rasik smiled and slapped Lasitor’s back.

“Things will turn out fine, just you see. Gibson knows what he’s doing in his field.”





Several days later, Lasitor had to grudgingly admit that Rasik was correct. Although, the younger mercenary was also correct. Dr. Gibson was an idiot in everything outside of biology. It took only a few hours into the first day’s hike for both mercs to realize the good biologist had no sense of direction, since he had led them in a complex and circuitous route through the dense forest close by to the rear end of the campsite. He had also unwittingly been bitten on the hand by a spider whose legs were longer than the biologist’s hands. Luckily for the biologist, the spider was not poisonous, and it occurred in the campsite, where it took no time to tend to it.

Lasitor questioned how the biologist survived back home at all.

When the good biologist had gotten over the shock and surprise of the spider bite, the group set off once again to find some new and exotic animal that would make the ‘team’ famous, as Dr. Gibson kept reassuring his colleagues. No one had denied that would be the case, though the other seven biologists knew that Dr. Gibson wanted all the glory himself.

The group woke up early and set out on a trek for a ridge overlooking a lake around six kilometers away, everyone carrying a backpack full of supplies; the mercenaries carried all the weapons while the biologists carried their own equipment. Dr. Gibson’s reason was extremely simple, if misguided.

“Treshers are one of the biggest predators on this planet. The avians feed mostly on sea crabs, though I’ve heard they will eat plenty of other things as well. We might be able to find something else that they eat that no one else knew about. Then we can name it and describe it and its impact on Treshers, therefore getting us mentioned in TWO articles!”

Lasitor noticed no one else felt compelled to explain that there would have been plenty of others that would have tried that all ready. Since threshers were well known all ready, wouldn’t their prey be fully understood by now? Sadly, the idea seemed to never have crossed the good biologist’s mind.

As the trek continued for its third hour, Lasitor wondered why they were walking. A quick hop in the shuttle would have gotten them there in less than thirty minutes, and would have given them more time to study the thresher’s other prey, if there were in fact any others. He had talked to Rasik about it before they left the camp, but he had shrugged and said that Dr. Gibson was adamant in walking there, since ship pollution was hazardous to the thresher chicks and against the law here on Tinallis.

So what if it’s against the law? If a law is gonna be a hindrance, why obey it?

No one else agreed, and so he was forced to walk the whole way. He played rear guard and was bored out of his mind, so he let it wander far away from this blasted planet. To him, anywhere was far better than here, where he had to follow the lead of an idiot biologist and the saps that willingly followed him. Rasik was the only other intelligent person in the group, but he played the part of a follower instead of the leader Lasitor knew the older man could be.

The Novas had a few changes in leadership since I joined it, and I can see him leading us one of these days. He’s got all the right traits for it. Hell, I’d follow him through the Maw, confident he could get us through it.

His musings made him smile, as he just knew that things would only get better with Rasik with them.

He also had spent enough time musing that they had finally reached the ridge. The lake below was pale blue-green with spots of darker green in patches spread throughout it. Lasitor pulled out a pair of macro binoculars and looked closer at the water. He was surprised to find that the water was wide, but not as deep as he had originally thought, since he saw the rocky bottom fairly easily.

Trees and shrubs started a few meters from the water’s edge, and a small stream that flowed from the ridge into the northern edge of the lake and had an outlet on the opposite side. There didn’t seem to be many animals around the lake, which rather surprised the young mercenary. You’d think that with a supply of water close by, there would be plenty of animals out here.

A loud caw pierced the air, and the attention of all ten people went to its source. A large bird with a black feather coat flew majestically in an arc down towards the water. The biologists and mercenaries watched as the bird sped up and descended towards the water’s edge. As it flew right on top of the water, it extended its talons and then pulled up and away. In its talons were two sea crabs, one in each talon. The avian flew towards another part of the ridge.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? The tresher is truly a wonderful bird!”

Lasitor lowered his macro binoculars and looked at the good biologist. He did agree that the tresher was pretty impressive, though he wouldn’t have gone so far as to call it ‘wonderful’ or ‘beautiful’ as Dr. Gibson had. The tresher’s face wasn’t every appealing to him. The beak seemed too wide for even a bird as large as the roughly two and a half meter tresher was. Also, the legs seemed too thin to support the weight of the bird properly. To him, it seemed far too much like an old person’s limbs: too much bone and not enough meat.

The tresher settled down somewhere on the ridge thirty meters away to their right. Dr. Gibson immediately set off after it. Rasik raised a hand to stop him.

“Hey, wait, what are you doing?”

Dr. Gibson ignored the man and continued going after the tresher. Rasik shook his head and sighed before he waved his hand for everyone to follow. The group followed in the wake of the good biologist.

Dr. Gibson led the group in a surprisingly straight line to where the tresher had set down. Lasitor was very surprised at how the biologist had managed to navigate them to it when he couldn’t even get them anywhere a couple days ago. Then Lasitor understood. The biologist would push himself when he saw his goal clearly in front of him. Before, there wasn’t anything in particular that the biologist was looking for, and so he took a roundabout route in the hopes of accidentally running across something.

It seemed like he was wrong about the biologist and he knew he’d have to do a better job of profiling people in the future. It wouldn’t do to misjudge an enemy and have to pay a hefty cost for it.



The group stopped and looked down the ridge to where the form of a tresher could be made out among the twisted branches of an exceedingly large and barren shrub. The sound of crab shells being ripped apart reached them, as well as the sound of high pitched chirps. Apparently, it was lunchtime. Dr. Gibson pulled out a pair of macro binoculars and settled himself down onto the rocky ridge to observe the tresher and its young below him.

Lasitor looked over at Rasik, and saw the older man let the biologist do whatever he wanted while the mercenary made sure nothing would happen to the group. The younger mercenary turned his attention in the opposite direction and scanned the area for any dangers. On top of the ridge, the entire lake and its immediate surroundings were visible. The scenery was nice, though he wasn’t too interested in the view. The trees could possibly hide numerous natural predators that could spring up and climb the wall of the ridge and make a meal of the team.

As if such a thing would really happen…

Lasitor sighed and picked up a rock. He grunted as he threw it as far out as he could, having grown bored of this already. After five days of the same things, he was tired of needlessly being cautious. Rasik turned and gave him a stern look and a frown. Lasitor shrugged with a ‘What? I didn’t do anything wrong’ expression. Rasik shook his head and returned to scanning.

Annoyed, the spiky haired youth kicked another rock off the ridge. The rock tumbled down and fell on top of the tresher as it was about to eat its share of the crabs. It squawked and turned its expression upwards. Dr. Gibson pulled away as quick as he could, while Lasitor moved closer to look at what had made the noise. The tresher saw a potential threat and flew up to deal with it.

Lasitor was amazed at the speed the large bird was about to move. He barely had time to move back and to the left as one of the tresher’s talons reached out to him. It missed, for the most part. The sharp talons only slashed the right side of the mercenary’s face instead of ripping off the whole face. He yelled and fell backwards face first, off balance from the shift in weight within the backpack and his sudden movement being thrown off by still getting hit.

The avian noted that there were far more creatures here. It decided that every last one of them was a threat, and it cried out as it begun a swoop down at them.

Rasik’s blaster rifle quickly opened fire three times on the bird and forced it to fly away in surprise. Rasik’s eyes widened when he saw that the trio of shots hadn’t killed the bird. He reached into his backpack and withdrew a concussion grenade.

The tresher had withdrawn five meters away and flapped its wings as it prepared to fly right back at the invaders. Rasik activated and threw the grenade, then told everyone to get on the ground. The tresher moved out of the way, though the grenade landed on its left wing.

A shockwave rippled out from the small explosive. The tresher took the blunt of the blow and the explosives held within the grenade. With a squawk and a flash of feathers, the bird met its untimely end. The ridge shook for a few seconds, and then calmed down. The humans on the ridge were knocked around and stunned, despite their attempts to remain untouched.

Rasik slowly rose and shook his head, trying to clear it and the ringing in his ears. He looked over at Lasitor, and found the young man face down on the rocky ridge. Slowly, he crawled to his comrade. He turned Lasitor over and gave him an inspection.

Blood flowed from the triple cuts on the youth’s right cheek and his nostrils. The skin had all ready started to bruise from what Rasik assumed was the impact of when Lasitor had fallen to the ground. The young man’s chest slowly rose and fell. Rasik smiled at the knowledge he was still alive. The smile fell as he realized something still had to be done with his wounds.

One of the biologists touched his shoulder, and asked a question Rasik couldn’t hear over the ringing. A quick exchange ensued where both sides realized they couldn’t hear each other. Rasik used inventive sign language to let the other know he needed to treat his comrade’s wounds. The biologist took off his backpack and rummaged through its contents until he found a first aid case. Rasik took it and nodded his thanks before he turned his attention to Lasitor.



Lasitor groaned and struggled to open his eyes. He finally managed it, and took in his surroundings. He was no longer on the ridge overlooking the lake, but on a bed in one of the cabins onboard the shuttle. With a groan, he sat up and placed his hand on his head as the cabin begun to spin around. He laid back down and closed his eyes and replayed his memory of what occurred.

He recalled the tresher flew at him and slashed him with one of its talons. He fell backwards and had connected with the ground. Everything afterwards was a blank. He reached to his cheek and felt a gauss pad over it. A sigh escaped his lips.

“Maybe it wasn’t a smart idea to put thirty kilos of stuff in my backpack and make sudden movements.”

He stayed on the bed for a few minutes before the door opened up. He turned his head and watched as Rasik entered the cabin. The older man smiled slightly at Lasitor.

“I see you’re awake now. That’s good, because I was getting tired of lugging you around.”

Rasik’s voice was harsh and condescending. His face twisted into annoyance and he crossed his arms over his broad chest. He walked further into the room and the door closed behind him. With the door closed, Rasik dropped his brooding and smiled more genuinely.

“The others are elsewhere in the ship right now. Had to keep up a façade for them.”

Rasik sat on his haunches next to the bed and patted the younger mercenary’s shoulder.

“There wasn’t really much else you could have done in that situation, that tresher was real quick. Don’t worry though, I kept the others alive and fulfilled the mission on my own. The good Dr. Gibson ended up finding something else on the way back to the campsite: a plant that caught his eye, actually. There seems to be a strain of flytrap in the rainforest, which is rather odd since they usually don’t do well with a lot of water. So, the trip was a success.”

Lasitor nodded and closed his eyes as he laid his head back. He processed what Rasik had said and it finally dawned on him.

“Wait, ‘was’ a success? You mean we’ve already left?”

Rasik nodded.

“Yeah, we’re about to dock with the station in orbit so we can properly get you patched back up. And, if you wanted it, remove those new scars you picked up.”

Lasitor shook his head.

“I’ll keep them. I’m a mercenary, so I’m supposed to look tough. Nothing says that as much as scars to brag about.”

Rasik laughed lightly and patted Lasitor’s shoulder before he stood up.

“I’ll tell you how things had gone with the tresher when we’re docked and on the way to the infirmary. That was one tough bird, I’ll tell you.”

Lasitor grinned, and winced at the pain it caused.

“Ow, well, at least I know I didn’t lose to something that was a wuss. I don’t think I’d ever live that down.”

Rasik laughed and left the cabin. He paused at the door and smiled back at Lasitor. Lasitor smiled back before he spoke.

“See you later.”

Rasik nodded.

“Yeah. Don’t forget, the bill’s coming out of your share.”