Flash Fic: Chernobog

It made sense afterwards. Everything that happened to Fifth Army became easily understandable once they found that first sensor hit back in the logs. Too late to me any good, or any of my comrades, of course.

We'd heard the stories. We'd even read after-action reports from over a dozen different polities. And still we could not fathom the notion of one person, one warrior so superbly trained and so incredibly focused, that they could slaughter entire armies while avoiding detection. They called him "Chernobog," a vile name from one of the many vile languages that propagate from that horrid little world. It translated literally as "black god," a being of corruption and hatred which demanded the living sacrifice of sophonts to satiate its unholy appetites. And Fifth Army was the latest offering.

Looking back, it was so shockingly simple, we should have realized from the outset we were under attack. The headquarters section went first. Ground vehicle troubles. The commanding officer told the rest of the Army to continue the advance; they'd catch up once everything was sorted out. We were almost a day out when the distress call reached us. We turned around, intent on rescuing our stranded comrades. And we walked right into the traps. By the time we returned to the headquarters section, they were all dead, along with a third of our forces. They'd turned our own reactions and protocols against us.

And that was just the start.

What followed was ten local days of blood and terror. We were herded away from our intended objective and into the worst possible terrain, under the worst possible conditions. If we stayed still, troops died. If we tried to move, troops died. What looked like safe lanes of passage led into kill boxes so tight, you couldn't even crawl out. We'd respond to a sentry being shot from long distance and suddenly part of our baggage train would go up in flames on the opposite side of the camp. Our enemy knew us better than we knew ourselves and it showed.

That last day was the worst. Four heavy corps, the flower of Praetixian military might and experience, burned down to one short squad. And we were trying to circle back to the killing ground where the headquarters section had been butchered. We thought if we could get hold of some comm gear, we could contact the Fleet to pick us up. Instead, we barely moved more than two canats. One by one, we died. Ged-lo, a cook who'd somehow survived longer than 99% of the actual soldiers, stepped on some kind of trigger, caught a sharpened tree branch through the thorax, and died aspirating on his own blood. Elaq-su, probably the most experienced one of us left, throat slashed. And me, caught from behind, a bullet shattering the inferior flexion joint. I was the last one alive. Twenty-three thousand soldiers and support personnel, and I was left alive. It wasn't luck. It wasn't fate. It was the cruel calculation of one human.

He came around to face me, wearing tattered looking garments which, I realized too late, had helped him hide from us. He took off his helmet, the one which had caught and concealed his own exhalations from our sensors. Round features, mild brown eye coloration in the center, he didn't look like a black god in the slightest. I think that was the most terrifying moment. The last survivor and him, almost like we were the only two beings on the planet. Then he reached into a pocket and produced one of our emergency beacons, and he tossed it to me.

"Tell your friends," he said simply before putting his helmet back on and disappearing into the rising mists of the mire. 

 (This piece originally appeared on r/humansarespaceorcs)