HH6节译：爪牙相对（1）
No accounting of the myriad wars of the Age of Darkness can ever be counted as complete, for with each conflict committed to the annals of history, a dozen more go unrecorded, there being scant witnesses left behind to tell of the triumphs and tragedies of Traitor and Loyalist alike. As mere mortals, we frame the age in our minds in terms of milestones—Isstvan, Prospero, Calth, Signis,Thramas, Mars, Molech, Yarant, BetaGarmon, and at last Terra herself. But those of our Order tasked with compiling a more thorough accounting of the age are cursed with the knowledge of a thousand more horrors. In some cases we know the names of every Legionary who fell; in many more we cannot even be certain which Legions were present. Most accounts lie somewhere Between these two extremes, and the fate of the mustering world of Bodt is typical in so many ways, and yet thoroughly singular in so many others.
没有哪份记录黑暗年代里各种战争的报告可以被算作完整，因为每当有一次冲突被载入史册，就有另外十数份未被记录，而且能幸存下来讲述忠诚派和叛军（双方）的胜利与悲剧的目击者少之又少。作为区区凡人，我们在自己的脑海中是以里程碑的名称来界定时代——伊斯特万，普罗斯佩罗，考斯，西格尼斯，萨拉马斯，火星，莫勒奇，雅兰特，贝塔—伽尔蒙和最后的泰拉。但在我们的修会当中，那些负责对黑暗年代进行更为彻底的统计工作的人们遭受着（调查）一千多项恐怖事件的知识内容所带来的诅咒折磨。在某些事件中，我们知道每一位战死沙场的军团战士们的姓名；但在更多的事件中，我们甚至不能确定有哪些军团出现在战场上。大部分报告则是介于这两种极端状况之间，Bodt世界的报告就是其中之一。集结（点）世界Bodt的命运在很多方面是典型的，但在很多其他方面是完全不同的。
The Red Talon
红爪
In the middle of 008.M31, the Traitor Legion fief world of Bodt fell under the baleful gaze of an orphaned subject of the Betrayed and slain Primarch Ferrus Manus, albeit one whose heritage perhaps bore more in common with the masters of the World Eaters fief world than that ofhis own sire. That warrior was Autek Mor, Iron-Father of the Morragul Clan of the Legiones Astartes Iron Hands.
在008.M31中叶，叛军的封地世界Bodt处在了一位孤儿战士的恶毒注视下——他的父亲是惨遭背叛与杀害的费鲁斯 马努斯，但此人在行事做派上与吞世者而非自己的父君更具共同点。这位战士是奥塔克 摩尔，钢铁之手阿斯塔特军团莫拉古氏族的钢铁之父。
Autek Mor was a war leader wrought in the crucible of the earliest battles of the Great Crusade, a Terran-born Legionary of the Xth Legion who had bought the right to command his own clan with the blood of its former lord. Mor was something of an outcast within the Legion and while he bent knee to his Primarch, he was never truly counted as kin to the other Clan-company masters. It was to the ranks of Clan Morragul that those Legionaries whose humours were ill-balanced with those of their brothers were consigned, turning it into a refuge for those who, like Autek Mor himself could not fully integrate into the Legion and its rigid codes.
奥塔克 摩尔是一位从大远征最早期战争中磨练而出的战争领袖，这位第十军团的泰拉裔战士在血腥的决斗中杀死了自己的前任领主，由此夺得了自己所在氏族的指挥权。摩尔是军团中的弃儿，尽管他屈膝臣服于自己的原体，但其他的氏族连队之主们从未将他算作过胞亲兄弟。那些与自己的兄弟们性格情绪不合的军团战士会被指派到莫拉古氏族，这里变成了那些和奥塔克 摩尔一样无法完全融入（适应）钢铁之手军团及其严格准则之人的避难所。
As outsiders within the Xth Legion, it should come as no great surprise that Clan Morragul was not counted amongst the force that the Iron Hands Primarch Ferrus Manus chose to stand by his side in the first wave of the assault on the Traitors at Isstvan V Indeed, Lord Manus reserved that honour for his favoured clan, the Avemii, and thus it was that when the hammer of Betrayal descended upon the Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders, the bulk of the Xth were deployed as orbital reserves, yet to unleash the full fury of their wrath upon the Traitors. Mor's flagship, the Red Talon, had yet even to assume its allotted position in the line at the moment of the Betrayal. When at last the Red Talon arrived at Isstvan V, it came upon a scene from hell itself. The massed warships of the orbital reserve were burning and the vox-net was drowned in bellows of rage and denial. Through it all one fact was repeated over and over, a fact few gave credit to yet which Mor accepted with bitter finality— Ferrus Manus was dead; the father of the Iron Hands had fallen to the blade of his own brother-Primarch.
作为第十军团中的局外人，莫拉古氏族并非被钢铁之手原体费鲁斯 马努斯选中去参加对伊斯特万五号上叛军的第一波进攻——这批进攻部队陪伴在原体身边。事实上，马努斯把这份荣誉留给了自己所青睐的阿维尼氏族，所以当背叛的重锤砸在钢铁之手、暗鸦守卫和火蜥蜴军团身上时，第十军团的主力仍旧在轨道上进行预备，未能将自己的全部怒火释放到叛军头上。当背叛发生的那一刻，摩尔的旗舰“红爪”号甚至还没有占据它在战列线上被指派到位置。当红爪号最终抵达伊斯特万五号时，船员们所见到的是一幅地狱之景。轨道预备队中的大量战舰都在熊熊燃烧，音频通讯网络淹没在了愤怒与否认的声浪中。在这整个过程中，某个事实在被一再重复，虽然几乎有人相信这是真的，但摩尔最终还是痛苦地接受了此事——费鲁斯 马努斯牺牲了；钢铁之手们的父亲倒在了自己原体兄弟的剑下。
Though he ordered the Red Talon to break through the Traitor fleet that had already sent dozens of Loyalist vessels to their doom, there was nothing that the master of the Morragul Clan could do to avert the massacre being inflicted on the surface or in orbit. At the last, the Red Talon's flanks aflame and her armour crawling with Traitor boarding claws, Autek Mor ordered his flagship and any other vessels within range to fight their way clear and to break Warp that they might regroup and perhaps later return to exact vengeance upon the Traitors.
尽管他命令红爪号去突破叛军舰队（的封锁）——后者已经摧毁了数十条忠诚派舰船，但这位莫拉古氏族的主宰者阻止不了发生在地面和轨道上的大屠杀。最终，红爪号的两侧也燃烧起来，叛军的跳帮爪也爬上了她的装甲；奥塔克 摩尔命令他的旗舰和范围内的其他所有舰船战出一条生路并突入亚空间，他们可能会重新集结，并且在之后回来向叛徒们进行复仇。
For most of the Loyalists who miraculously broke out of the slaughter at Isstvan V;vengeance would become secondary to simple survival. In time, the so-called Shattered Legions coalesced around the Iron Hands war leader Shadrak Meduson, but Autek Mor would have no truck with his brother-officer's scheme to instigate a guerrilla war intended to bleed the Traitors by a thousand cuts; Autek Mor rejected such ploys as unworthy and beneath him, and instead formulated a strategy of his own. He would gather what forces would rally to his banner and launch a series of full-scale assaults upon worlds that the Traitors had captured or turned, allowing them to expend their strength and then destroying what remained with overwhelming force. He would thus create a firebreak across the void, dividing the sectors that had fallen under the Warmaster's heel from those still loyal to Terra. It was a brutal strategy in which entire populations were to be allowed to fall while the Iron Hands stayed their wrath, yet it was one that made full accounting of the relentless calculus of war. With their force blunted by their invasion operations, the Traitors could be attacked at the moment of their supposed victory whilst at their weakest and obliterated without mercy. There were plenty more worlds that were to fall beneath the Traitors' power with not a drop of blood being spilt, and for these Mor would reserve the greatest measure of his boundless wrath.
对于大部分从伊斯特万五号上的屠杀中奇迹般逃出的人们而言，生存是第一要务，其次才是复仇。随着时间推移，很多所谓的“破碎军团”在钢铁之手战争领袖——沙达克 美杜森身边合并（集结）起来，但奥塔克 摩尔不愿参与到自己兄弟旨在用一千次进攻放干叛徒们鲜血的游击战计划当中；他拒绝了那些不值得（使用）也不符合自己身份的伎俩，而是制定了自己的战略。他会聚集起那些愿意团结在自己旗帜下的部队，并对那些被叛军攻占或（主动）投降叛军的世界发动一系列全面进攻，此举是令叛军们消耗自身力量，然后让摩尔的部队用压倒性的力量摧毁仅剩的部队。他会由此在虚空中形成一条防火带，将仍旧忠于泰拉的星区与那些陨落于战帅铁靴之下的星区分隔开。这是一种残酷的战略，钢铁之手们处在盛怒之中时，整个世界的人口都会死亡，这充分说明了战争的无情公式。叛军们的力量会在在入侵（其他世界）的过程中被削弱，而摩尔会在他们获得自认为的胜利时进攻其最虚弱的部位，并且毫无仁慈地将之歼灭。还有更多的世界未做丝毫的抵抗牺牲便屈服于叛军的统治，而摩尔也将自己无尽怒火中最为激烈的那部分留给了这些星球。
From the Deeps
自深渊归来
Within a year of the Dropsite massacre, the greater part of the northern Imperium had fallen to the Traitors. The Loyalist armies were in disarray and prevailing conditions in the Warp had made long range travel and astro-telepathic communications perilous in the extreme. World after world had fallen to the Traitors' inexorable advance on Terra and the Loyalist armies reeled before them, forced into a series of costly fighting withdrawals that at times bordered on a rout. It was from the bloodied void that the Red Talon descended upon the Warmaster's dark empire in a campaign of fire and blade that was the diametric opposite of that being silently waged by the Shattered Legions of Shadrak Meduson, one born of the fearsome mien and bitter anima of Autek Mor.
在登陆点大屠杀之后的一年之内，帝国北部的广大区域都落入叛军之手。忠诚派军队处于混乱状态，亚空间中的盛行状况让长距离航行和星语通讯变得极端危险。叛军对于泰拉不可阻挡的进军令一个又一个世界陷落，忠诚派军队在他们面前摇摇欲坠，被迫进行了一系列代价高昂的战斗撤退，有时甚至濒临溃败。正是从这片血腥的虚空中，红爪号降临到了战帅的黑暗帝国，带来了以烈火和利刃进行的战役——这场战争与沙达克 美杜森麾下破碎军团的无声行动全然相反，它诞生自摩尔的恐怖仪态与痛苦灵魂。
The Age of Darkness has obscured the true accounting of a great many battles, and those fought along the leading edge of the Warmaster's advance on Terra are especially shrouded. It cannot be said for certain when Autek Mor launched the first strike of his campaign, yet certainly the fate met by Gethsamaine Colonus in the Cyclops Cluster must rank as one of the very first such instances.
黑暗年代已经令许多战役的真实记录变得模糊，而那些在战帅进军泰拉的前沿战场上发生的战斗尤其遭到了掩盖。我们无法确切地说出奥塔克 摩尔在何时发动了自己战役的第一次进攻，但独眼巨人群星的Gethsamaine Colonus世界所遭受的命运肯定是第一批此类案例中的某一个。
Rising from the depths of the Grail Abyss, a ragged yet bellicose flotilla of warships led by the Red Talon fell upon Gethsamaine, which had declared for the Warmaster a year earlier. What followed was a brief yet shockingly brutal assault in which the Iron Hands claimed key Traitor prisoners before destroying the world's major cities in all-consuming nuclear blasts that would render the entire world uninhabitable for generations to come.
在红爪号的率领下，一支褴褛却好战的战争舰队从圣杯深渊的深处扑向了Gethsamaine世界——此地在一年之前宣布归顺战帅。随之而来的是一场简短且骇人残酷的进攻：钢铁之手们在行动中抓捕了叛军主要人物作为囚犯，之后这个世界上的主要城市在吞噬一切的核爆中被摧毁，这让整个世界在之后的世世代代中都不适宜居住。
Even as the Imperium reeled, Autek Mor began his own war, one fought beyond the sight and the staying hand of the War Council of distant Terra. Gethsamaine Colonus may have been the first Traitor- controlled world to know the judgement of the Red Talon, but many more would know it by the end. It has been said of Autek Mor and the force he built around the Morragul Clan-company that he was the last Loyalist out of the Coronid Deeps. In truth, he never abandoned them nor took a single step backwards. Rather, he simply weathered the storm of the Traitors' passing before striking from the rearward, a strategy that, though unacknowledged at the time, is likely to have saved countless Loyalist worlds from the Warmaster's hand.
哪怕帝国摇摇欲坠，奥塔克 摩尔还是开始了他自己的战争，在遥远泰拉的战争议会视线与干预范围之外奋战着。在叛军控制的世界中，Gethsamaine Colonus可能是第一个知晓了红爪号所降下的审判的，但最终还会有更多世界知晓。据说奥塔克 摩尔与他围绕莫拉古氏族连队所建立起的部队是王冠深渊之外区域中最后的忠诚派。事实上，他从未抛弃他们，也没有后退过一步。相反，他只是承受住了叛军们经过时所带来的风暴般猛烈进攻，然后从其后侧发动进攻；尽管当时并没有人承认，但这种战略很可能从战帅手中救出了无数的忠诚派世界。
The Assault on Tredecimmia
进攻Tredecimmia
As the war ground on, Autek Mor's force was swelled by other Loyalist factions, including remnants of the Imperial Fists Legion and the Agathon Solar Auxilia who had opposed the Warmaster during the Manachean War. But it was not just allies that Mor amassed as he fought on, but enemies too, for he made a point of taking prisoner key Traitor officers and administrators from each world he struck at. It was from these captives that Mor learned of the status of the nearby World Eaters fief world of Bodt, and his suspicions were confirmed when the Imperial Fists communicated that they had encountered and engaged a number of Traitor Mechanicum conveyance vessels plying the warp-lanes linking Sarum and Bodt.
随着战事推进，摩尔的部队也因吸纳了其他忠诚派分队而壮大起来，其中也包括在Manachean战争期间对抗战帅的帝国之拳军团与Agathon太阳军部队的残军。但摩尔在战斗中积累的不仅有盟友，还有敌人，因为他特别重视从自己进攻的每一个世界里抓走重要的叛军军官和行政官员。正是通过这些俘虏，摩尔了解到附近的吞世者军团领地——Bodt世界的地位，而且当帝国之拳发来通讯，称他们在连接Sarum和Bodt的亚空间上遇到了许多机械神教叛军的运输船并与之交战时，他的怀疑得到了验证。
Mor surmised that the World Eaters subject world was not only intact, but building towards some role in the war that had yet to be fully revealed or realised. This made the fief a high value target indeed, and one which Mor now had a strong enough force to engage. Doing so would be an escalation beyond Mor's existing strategy of allowing a world to fall to a Traitor assault before launching a massive counter-attack, but for several reasons the operation was judged worth undertaking.
摩尔推测吞世者军团主星不仅完好无损，而且在战争中扮演着某种尚未被完全揭示或实现的角色。这令吞世者的封地世界在事实上成为了高价值目标，而且奥塔克 摩尔也有足够强大的力量来与之交战。这一做法是摩尔的既定战略的升级版——这位钢铁之父原有的策略让一个世界陷入叛军的进攻，然后发动大规模反击；但出于对多个原因的考虑，这项行动被判定为值得进行。
Primarily, it was known to the Loyalists that the muster world had once hosted a sizable stockpile of Legiones Astartes war materiel, which, if it was still present, should be denied to the Traitor cause at all costs. Secondly, the records indicated that the planet served as a recruiting world for the XIIth Legion and so might still be host to a large and as yet uncommitted Legion reserve whose neutralisation would serve the Loyalists' war effort well. The presence of the Sarum Mechanicum in the region raised further possibilities, which Autek Mor was unwilling to discuss with his allies openly but which in retrospect must have alerted him to the possibilities of some manner of unsanctioned modification of the Legiones Astartes implantation and indoctrination process. If Mor did indeed suspect this, subsequent events would prove him correct.
首先，忠诚派们知道：这个集合世界曾经储存了大量的阿斯塔特军团的战争物资，如果这批军备仍然存在的话，他们要不惜一切代价阻止叛军将其动用。其次，记录表明这颗星球充当着第十二军团的征兵世界，所以此地可能仍然有一支庞大且未表明态度的军团预备部队，他们的中立很利于忠诚派的战争发挥效果。Sarum机械神教（成员）在该地区的出现进一步提升了某些可能性，奥塔克 摩尔不愿与自己的盟友们公开讨论这一点，但从事后来看，这些现象肯定是让他想到了对于阿斯塔特军团战士的植入和（意识）灌输过程进行某些未经批准修改的可能性。如果摩尔确实怀疑了这一点，那么随后的事件将证明他是正确的。
Here, records of the assault on the World Eaters fief world become increasingly fragmentary, necessitating a degree of supposition and speculation. Of greater concern than the lack of clarity however is the reason for its arising, which with the benefit of hindsight appears deliberate. It is known that as the fleet of the Red Talon was plying the Warp towards its target, the situation to the galactic south and west was growing ever more unstable. Entire fronts were collapsing in the shadow of the Traitors' advance on Terra and what amounted to the Imperium's central command —in reality, a host of lord-magisters scattered across the embattled stars and barely able to communicate with one another, let alone the War Council of Terra— was advocating a massive, inter-sector holding action along a line Between Paramar and Chondax. Incomplete transmission logs suggest to some an abortive astro-telepathic communication Between one of these lord-magisters and the Red Talon fleet, leading to the theory that a representative of the War Council attempted to order Mor's force to join in with this operation. If such an order was issued, it was certainly not followed. No man with an inkling of Autek Mor's demeanour would have presumed to issue him any such order, for the Iron-Father was known as a dour warrior of especially dark humours upon whose shoulders the authority of others sat ill, even, so it is said, that of his own Primarch.
关于摩尔进攻吞世者封地世界的记录在此处变得愈发碎片化，需要进行一定程度的推测和猜测。不过，相比于缺乏清晰度，更令人担忧的是这些现象产生的原因——从事后来看，这似乎是有意为之。众所周知，当红爪号率领的舰队从亚空间向自己的目标前进时，银河南部和西部的状况正变得越来越不稳定。整个前线（战场）都在叛军向着泰拉进军的阴影下崩溃着，帝国的中央指挥部（事实上，他们就是一群分散在各个四面楚歌星球上的高级领主，彼此之间几乎无法沟通，更不要说与泰拉上的战争议会取得联系）主张在帕拉玛星系至Chondax星系一线进行大规模的跨星区牵制行动。不完整的传送日志显示了这些高级领主当中的某一位与红爪舰队之间失败的星语通讯，这导致了一种理论的出现，即战争议会的一名代表试图命令摩尔的军队参加这次行动。但任何对奥塔克·摩尔的行事做派稍有了解的人都不会贸然向他下达这样的命令，因为这名钢铁之父被认为是一位性格极其阴暗的阴沉战士，他厌恶承受他人凭权力所施加的命令——据说他甚至也是这样对待自己的原体。
Whatever the cause and outcome of any communication that may have taken place Between Mor and the Terran Council of War, the Red Talon's course was unaltered and the Iron-Father's intent unmoved. Twelve days after the fleet's departure from lod Binary it translated at Bodt out-system, its vessels arrayed for war and its warriors steeled for a large-scale assault upon a world known to belong to the bloodiest and most savage of the Legiones Astartes.
无论可能发生在摩尔和泰拉战争议会之间的通讯的原因与结果为何，红爪号的航向都没有改变，钢铁之父的意愿也没有动摇。在从lod双星动身出发十二天之后，舰队抵达了Bodt星系外围。舰船整装备战，船上的战士们也全副武装，准备向Bodt——这个已知属于最血腥也最野蛮阿斯塔特军团的世界发起大规模进攻。
The Breaking of the Seals
解禁
The histories of the age are not party to the planning of the assault on Bodt's primary city of Tredecimmia and such accounts that exist are drawn from myriad sources, no single one possessed of a complete view of the events that followed. Some of the accounts must be judged by us now as questionable in their veracity, while others are fragmentary at best and contradictory at worst. Having discounted the most outlandish of statements, invariably those of mortals whose minds were broken by the overwhelming spectacle that they witnessed at the height of the assault, only a core remains. This kernel of truth must serve as our understanding of Autek Mor's attack, no matter how improbable certain passages may now appear to us so long after the event has been consigned to the histories of the Age of Darkness.
（上述）这段时期的历史与摩尔袭击Bodt世界的主城Tredecimmia无关，现存的此类报告来自于无数种资料，也没有人完整了解随后发生的事件。对于某些报告，我们必须对其真实性加以判断；至于其他资料，情况最好的是零零碎碎，情况最差的则是自相矛盾。我们略去了这些报告中最为古怪夸张的陈述——毕竟这些叙述者们始终是凡人，他们在进攻高潮所目睹的压倒性场面会令其意识破碎；这之后剩下的便是核心内容。这一事件很久之前便计入到黑暗年代的历史当中，但无论（资料的）某些段落在如今看来是多么的不可思议，我们都必须以真相的核心来作为对于奥塔克 摩尔进攻行动的理解。
