IA12节译：阿玛拉之战（1）
3964992.M41 The Eve of Destruction
3964992.M41毁灭的前夜
The onslaught that had consumed more than half of the inhabited star systems that made up the Orpheus Sector had done so in just less than a hundred standard days, sowing panic and terror on a vast scale and ending the lives of billions. In doing so the invaders had thrown all before them into disarray, savage battles becoming desperate retreats and retreats becoming anarchic routs as the sectors forces were owcome and scattered, the invaders ravaging ever onwards to victory after victory. No imperial force available was able to do more than delay the enemy's onslaught or stay their progress. Then, seemingly inexplicably, they stopped.
在不到一百个标准天里，这场进攻就已经吞噬了超过半数组成俄尔普斯星区的恒星系们，它在规模庞大的区域内激起了恐慌，导致了数十亿人的死亡。侵略者的所作所为令他们面前的一切都陷入了混乱，随着星区中的部队被击败和分散，残酷的战斗变为了绝望的撤退，继而撤退又变为了混乱无序的溃退。入侵者们先前蹂躏了诸多世界，夺取了一次又一次的胜利。现有的帝国军队除了拖延敌人的猛攻或阻止他们前进之外，再也进行不了其他反扑。但在这然后，入侵者们似乎莫名其妙地停了下来。
At Amarah, under the oversight of Sector Commander and Governor-general Calibron Laan and his military council, all forces that could be availed upon were concentrated and rallied with haste, none knowing just how long this pause in the attack would continue. As time wore on and no attack came. Laan's growing paranoid and seeming instability—at the time unknown in its particular cause—weighed heavily in the battle plans and dispositions of force that were enacted in Amarah defence. The out-of-sector reinforcements that now began to arrive in response to Lean's calls for help were largely channelled directly to the build-up at Amarah. Other local units from the worlds of the Arcantis Cluster and eastern portions of the sector, as yet untouched by the war, were stripped wholesale from their defensive positions and likewise redirected to Amarah, weakening the protection of their home worlds; an act which damaged greatly morale and planetary political stability, leading to outright mutiny on several occasions which needed to be brutally dealt with by the Commissariat. Within a quarter span of a standard year the forces arrayed at Amarah had grown to colossal proportions, with over nineteen million Imperial Guardsmen in place, with perhaps ten times that amount of reservists and militia raised under emergency edict and armed and equipped with the Cadian pattern to the strictest provisions of the Department Mumtorum. Foremost among the off-world Imperial Guard formations in martial power, and one of the last contingents to arrive in-system, were two million troops drawn from the Death Korps of Krieg, spearheaded by the veteran 17th Line Korps under the command of Marshal Karis Venner.
阿玛拉世界上，在星区指挥官兼总督卡里波龙 拉恩及其军事议会的监督下，所有可用的部队都被集中起来并迅速集结，没人知道这种进攻暂停的状态会延续多久。但随着时间流逝，进攻并未到来。拉恩日益加剧的偏执和看似精神不稳定的状况（当时人们还并不知道其中的真实原因）对阿玛拉防御部队所制定的作战计划与军力部署产生了重要影响。为了响应拉恩的呼救，从俄尔普斯星区之外赶来的援军已经抵达，他们大部分都被直接输送到阿玛拉世界进行备战。尚未被战争所触及的Arcantis星群和星区东部各个世界上的当地部队也被命令全员离开防守位置，并且同样被重新派往阿玛拉，这削弱了他们母星所受到的保护；此举严重损害了士气与行星（政府）的政治稳定，在很多次情况中都导致了公开叛乱，其程度严重到需要政战司进行残酷处理。在四分之一个标准年之内的时间里，部署在阿玛拉的部队已经增长到了庞大的规模：超过一千九百万人的帝国卫队，以及按照紧急法令而组建起的数量大概十倍于其的预备队和民兵——这些后备部队也按照卡迪安模式进行了武装，达到了军务部最严格规定（的要求）。在这些从其他世界赶来的帝国卫军编队中，军事力量最为重要的是一支二百万人的克里格死亡军团部队，担任其矛头的是元帅卡里斯 文纳所指挥的克里格第17线列军，这是一支作战经验老道的部队。
Additionally, several Space Marine Chapters had answered the Orphean Sectors call to arms, including the entirety of the Minotaurs Chapter, its vanguard elements now sweeping through the northern Orpheus Sector alongside a company of the Marauders Chapter which had also deployed to the Amarah system, while detachments of the Red Seraphs and Nemesis Chapters were known to be en route. The armada massed in Amarah's voidspace at this time was no less impressive, comprising several hundred escort-class vessels and more than sixty rated cruisers and capital vessels of the imperial Navy including seven primus-grade battleships and four Space Marine battle-barges, with the ancient and storied Arica Dominus as their flagship. Seldom in the history of the Imperium had such overwhelming force been seen in the defence of but a single star system.
另外，还有数个星际战士战团回应了俄尔普斯星区的呼救，其中包括米诺陶战团全员，他们的先锋分队正和掠夺者战团的一支连队共同横扫俄尔普斯星区北侧——后者也被部署到了阿玛拉星系；同时红炽天使和复仇女神战团的分队也已知在赶来的路上。此时聚集在阿玛拉虚空中的舰队同样令人印象深刻，其中包括帝国海军的数百艘护航舰级别飞船和超过六十艘巡洋舰级别舰船与主力舰，其中包括七艘最高级别战列舰和四艘星际战士战列母舰，旗舰是古老且传奇的“阿里卡主宰者”号。在帝国历史中，用如此压倒性的力量来保卫单个恒星系是很少见的。
As the silence of the invaders drew out and time passed, the rush to defend Amarah seemed no longer so pressing and calls for more immediate action to meet the enemy's forces became common, but laan and his council remained adamant. An absolute moratorium was imposed on any attempt to counter-attack into the lost regions of Orphean space, or even conduct reconnaissance in force to ascertain if imperial survivors still fought on isolated and alone or even to espy enemy movements and strength. A dark veil had been drawn across the sectors lost worlds which Laan and his confidants seemed loath to disturb.
随着入侵者的沉默延续和时间的推移，保卫阿玛拉的行动似乎不再那么紧迫，呼吁采取更为迫切的行动去对抗敌军部队成为常见状况，但拉恩和他的议会仍旧要坚持现状。任何向俄尔普斯星区沦陷区域发起反攻的尝试都被绝对禁止，甚至连派出部队进行侦察以确定帝国幸存者是否仍在孤军奋战，或侦察敌人的动向和兵力都是不被允许的。一片黑暗帷幕已经笼罩住了星区中各个已沦陷的世界，那里是拉恩和他的亲信们似乎不愿去打扰的地方。
3970992.M41 The Black Fleet
3970992.M41黑色舰队
The Battte of Amarah began without preamble or warning; no deep range augury foretold of the Necrons' coming and no Astropath or seer prophesied their presence in the currents of the Empyrean. At 1534202, local timescale, a massive gravitational flux sprang into being near the Amarah star, its shockwaves causing the sun to violently eject plasma and radiation into space in a series of massive solar flared. The fury of the injured star was such it reached as far as the orbit of the system's innermost planet，Auric, and flash-incinerated everything on its day-side in an instant. Across the Amarah system sensor-nets and auspex scanners were blinded, vox traffic was drowned out and unshielded instruments rendered useless in the electromagnetic howl of the tortured star. Such was the confusion and tumult created by the sudden solar storm that it was not until the Sentinel-4 battle station, in deep orbit around Amarah Prime, exploded in a rapidly expanding ball of burning gasses and molten wreckage, that it was realised that the long-looked for attack had finally come—the Necron host had unleashed their wrath.
阿玛拉之战在没有任何预兆和警告的情况下开始了；没有预示着死灵们到来的远程占卜报告，也没有星语者和先知预言出它们在至高天浪潮中的出现。在当地时间1534202，阿玛拉恒星附近突然出现了大量重力流动现象，冲击波导致恒星向太空猛烈地喷射等离子体和辐射，形成一系列巨大的恒星耀斑。受伤恒星的怒火极为猛烈，以至于耀斑都抵达了星系中最内侧行星Auric的轨道处，位于昼半球的一切都在瞬间化为灰烬。在这颗倍受折磨的恒星的电磁怒吼声中，阿玛拉星系各处的传感器网络和鸟卜仪扫描器都尽数失灵，音频通信被淹没，未被屏蔽的设备也变得毫无用处。这场突然爆发的太阳风暴造成的混乱状况是如此严重，以至于直到位于阿玛拉主星轨道深处的哨兵4号战斗空间站发生爆炸，成为了由燃烧着的气体与融化的残骸组成的快速膨胀球体时，人们才意识到自己长久等待的进攻已经最终到来了——死灵大军已经释放出了怒火。
The vast Imperial battlefleet on-station further out at the fleet anchorage at Laymon (Amarah Ill), posted at what conventional wisdom dictated was the optimum location to best intercept ships translating into the system from the Warp, quickly brought back-up systems and optical surveyors online to view the destruction. They found to their horror the image of a black fleet of unknown vessels silhouetted against the burning death-throes of the battle station, the ships travelling at such near impossible speeds they were in range of Amarah Prime in moments, and there was nothing that could be done to stop them, nor even time to give a warning. The enemy had appeared within the walls.
庞大的帝国战争舰队驻扎在位于Laymon（阿玛拉三号）的更远处舰队锚地，他们所处的位置是传统（战争）智慧策略中对于从亚空间中进入星系的飞船进行最佳拦截的最佳地点，舰队很快就启动了备用系统和光学测量仪来检查受破坏情况。他们惊恐地发现，在战斗空间站死亡剧痛所引发的熊熊烈火的映衬下，出现了一支由未知舰船组成的黑色舰队的身影。这些飞船在以近乎不可能的速度航行着，它们顷刻间便抵达了对于阿玛拉主星的进攻范围之内，而帝国部队采取不了任何行动来阻止它们，甚至没时间发出警报。敌人已然兵临城下。
As the fleet raised its mighty engines from their idling slumber, a process that would take time that Amarah Prime could ill afford, the Arica Dominus and her sister ships were forced to watch impotently as flashes of golden and emerald light flickered around Amarah as orbital minefields and weapons platforms were swept aside by the black scythe blade and spear-like shapes of the alien invaders. Systematically. Amarah Prime was stripped of the defences that so much blood, treasure and time had forged, and Sentinel-2 then Sentinel-1—each a battle station with the firepower of an entire cruiser squadron in its own right— were blasted into a pyre of burning wreckage and left to hang like fiery omens in Amarah Prime's night sky. The capital world of the Orpheus Sector lay open for attack.
舰队从空转的休眠状态中醒来，点燃自己巨大的引擎飞向阿玛拉主星，而这个过程需要的时间是阿玛拉主星提供不了的。当异形入侵者黑色的镰刀状与长矛状飞船将轨道雷区和武器平台们扫去一边时，“阿里卡主宰者”号和她的姊妹舰被迫无能为力地眼看着金色和翠绿色的光芒闪烁在阿玛拉周围。异形舰队系统性地摧毁了阿玛拉主星上用大量的血汗、财富和时间铸就的防御设施，哨兵1号和哨兵2号这两座战斗空间站（它们自身都拥有着一整支巡洋舰中队的火力）都被先后炸成了一堆燃烧中的残骸，它们如同炽热的预兆那般挂在阿玛拉主星的夜空中。面对着敌人的进攻，俄尔普斯星区的首府世界洞门大开。
3971992.M41 Planetfall
3971992.M41行星登陆
By the time the orbital defence batteries that shielded its hive cities, and the missile silos concealed beneath its grey seas, began to open fire wildly into the skies above, the enemy was already at Amarah's gates. Dark and unnatural storms boiled in the skies above, riven with vivid and corposant lightning, whilst eerie flashes of pale radiance flickered in the shadows between the hive spires and tunnels and passageways deep below ground. Tactical vox-nets, still mired in howling static and inierference, were suddenly swamped with reports of attack both from the ground and the air. In the wide ceremonial plazas of the Callowsheen Hive, a spectral army of blackened iron had appeared between the lightning-strokes and was advancing through the city streets, slaughtering all before it. At Duneratd Star Port, swarms of ravenous metallic insects in their thousands had erupted from the subterranean access tunnels below, devouring everything in their path and tearing a part the troop shuttles and gunships on their slipways from within.
当护卫着巢城的轨道防御炮塔，以及隐藏在星球灰色海洋之下的导弹发射井开始向上方的天空疯狂开火时，敌人已经逼近了阿玛拉的门户。天空中翻涌着黑暗且超自然的风暴，并被耀眼且如同放电光球一般的闪电撕裂开，与此同时，诡异的苍白光芒闪烁在巢都尖顶、隧道和地下深处通道之间的阴影中。原本仍旧深陷于嘈杂的静电声与干扰声中的战术音频通讯网络，突然淹没在了进攻报告声中——阿玛拉遭到了来自空中和地面两个方向的进攻。在Callowsheen巢都宽阔的纪念广场上，一支由黑色钢铁组成的幽魂大军从闪电间现身，它们正在沿着城市街道前进，并屠杀掉自己面前的一切。在Duneratd星港处，数以千计极为饥饿的金属昆虫从地下管道钻出，它们吞噬了沿途的一切，并将那些位于滑道上的帝国部队穿梭机们和炮艇们从内部撕碎。
Elsewhere the hive city of New Vassburg,the largest of Amarah Prime's arcologies, was to be destroyed from the air as the sleek shapes of Doom Scythe and Night Shroud class attack ships fell upon it from the storm-wracked skies above. The antimatter bombs released as lightless-black containment spheres by the Night Shrouds shattered on contact with their targets, ripping them into oblivion and rending great wounds into the spires, which so undermined began to topple and crush down, bringing untold carnage upon the multitudes trapped inside. The haIf-submerged complexes of the Tritonus hive were likewise soon undone. The city's defences had long relied upon its labyrinth of flooded passageways and sub-levels to impede and confuse any attacker, but found they were poor barricades against the machine-dead things that came for them; creatures with no need to breathe and to whom darkness was refuge. Assailed by mournful funeral barques that rose from the black waters bearing silent legions of skeletal metallic warriors and scissor-handed fiends that crawled from the shadows to do murder, soon the air-domes and coral-like heights of Tritonus were also splintered and falling, its watery streets echoing with the scream of the dying.
拥有着流线外形的毁灭之镰战机和黑夜寿衣进攻艇从暴风肆虐的天空中降临到了阿玛拉最大的生态建筑——New Vassburg巢城，它们将要从空中摧毁巢都各处。黑夜寿衣丢下近似夜色般漆黑的有抑制功能的球体，这些反物质炸弹在接触到目标时破碎开，将目标湮灭掉并在巢都塔尖上留下巨大的伤口。这种轰炸是如此具有破坏性，以至于巢都塔尖开始崩塌并碾碎下方建筑，被困其中的普通人们遭到了不可言说的大屠杀。Tritonus巢都半浸没于水中的复合体很快也同样遭到了破坏。长期以来，这座巢城的防御一直是依靠被洪水淹没的迷宫般的通道和地下巢层来阻碍和迷惑所有攻击者，但它们阻挡不了那些到达此地的机械死者们；它们是无需呼吸的生物，而且以黑暗作为隐藏地。悲恸的葬仪巨舰从黑色的水中升起，运来了骨骼状金属战士组成的沉默军团，有着剪刀状双手的恶鬼也从黑暗中爬出，它们发起了进攻，Tritonus巢都的空中圆顶和珊瑚状的高层很快也被撕碎并倒塌下来，满是积水的街道中回荡着垂死者的尖叫。
Beyond the cities that were the invaders, primary targets, military outposts were also soon attacked by the relentless Necron invaders. The foremost of these, the polar Bastion Militaris, a lynchpin of the planet's defences, was suddenly besieged by a phalanx of hulking war machines that hovered soundlessly over the ice flows. Seemingly unstoppable by shot and shell they closed in relentlessly, tearing apart the mountain holdfast with lashing blasts of energy and unleashed waves of seismic force that brought down the granite faces of the fortress' curtain walls as if they were made of sand. The kilometres of prefabricated barrack-blocks on the Marcovan Peninsula, built to house nearly a million Guardsmen, were simply annihilated from existence, blazing lambent shafts of light descending from orbit and leaving nothing but fine white ash and fused silica glass where once a vast army had stood rallying for war.
入侵者们的主要目标——位于城市之外的军事哨站也很快就遭到了这些无情死灵们的进攻。其中最为重要的是极地军事要塞，此处行星防御关键设施突然遭到了某支巨型战争机械方阵的进攻，这些机械无声无息地悬浮在冰流上。人类的枪火和炮弹似乎都无法将其阻止，它们无情地接近了要塞，用大量的能量爆炸撕碎了山体中的堡垒，并且释放出地震波，令堡垒幕墙的花岗岩外层如沙土般破碎崩落。帝国在Marcovan半岛上建立了数千米长的营房区，用以安置将近一百万名卫军士兵，但从轨道上降下的炽热燃烧光束将建筑群化为乌有，那片曾有庞大的军队集结起来准备作战的区域现在只剩下了细密的白色灰烬与熔融的硅玻璃。
Outmatched by an enemy that seemed to be suddenly everywhere and had the power simply to materialise out of thin air, the defenders of Amarah,though thrown into disorder, nevertheless fought back and fought back hard against the invader.At Callowsheen the massacring legions were met by the tanks of the Tekarn 234th Armoured Battalion, who quickly learned that even the small arms of the invaders proved lethal to their heaviest armour at close range. Knowing that to remain on the open battlelield would mean swift destruction, the commanders of the battalion therefore pulled their vehicles back into the wide concourses where they could hope to engage their foe at range, in places almost jamming the area between the hab-spires with Leman Russ drawn up in staggered lines abreast. Manticore and Basilisk artillery tanks behind them providing barrage fire support.At the first sight of the unliving ranks of the Necron Warriors stalking towards them, the Tekarn opened fire in an unrelenting barrage of shellfire at long range through which nothing could hope to survive. Even as rank upon rank were blasted apart and shattered warriors were sent spinning into fragments, more took their place and yet more still dragged themselves up from the broken ground and began to re-assemble thernselves to haul their metal bodies forward again. The Tekarn, seeing with horror that their fury was doing no more than holding the tide back, could not relent their barrage and kept firing until their cannon barrels began to glow dull red with heat as shells were brought up with back-breaking haste to feed the guns. A savage stalemate of sorts had been achieved. It was one the Tekarn officers knew they could not sustain long, but little did they know they would not get the chance to see how far their determination and munitions could last against so implacable a foe.
敌人似乎突然出现在了各处，而且似乎有能力凭空出现，它们比阿玛拉守军更胜一筹；但尽管陷入了混乱无序状态，守军仍然奋起反击入侵者。Tekarn第234装甲营的坦克在Callowsheen迎战了大举屠杀人类的死灵军团，卫军们很快就意识到，在近距离情况下，哪怕是入侵者手中最小型的武器对他们装甲最为厚重的载具而言也是致命的。装甲营的指挥官们明白，继续在开阔战场上交战意味着快速毁灭，因此他们将载具撤回到宽阔的广场上——卫军在这里有望与敌军远距离交战。黎曼鲁斯坦克并排交错停靠，次级尖塔之间的某些地方挤到近乎水泄不通。排在黎曼鲁斯坦克后方的蝎尾狮和石化蜥蜴炮击坦克提供炮火支援。一经看到死灵武士们组成的不死大军逼近的最初迹象，Tekarn营便连续不断地从远距离发射炮火——在此等炮火下，没有任何事物是有望幸存的。尽管死灵武士们被一排又一排地炸成碎块，而且他们破碎的身躯又继而变成了碎片，但有更多的武士接替倒下者的位置，还有更多的武士从破碎的地面上爬了起来，它们的身体开始重组，（用双手）拖着自己向前爬去。Tekarn营惊恐地看到：自己的怒火不过是阻碍了这些潮水般的敌人，他们不停射击，直到炮管因为热量发出暗红色的光芒——卫军们以极快的速度装填着炮弹。双方形成了一种残酷的僵局，Tekarn营的军官们知道己方在这种状况下撑不了太久，但他们也几乎不知道自己将没有机会看到己方的决心和弹药在对抗如此无情的敌人时能坚持多久。
For the valiant guardsmen of Tekarn, death came from both above and below. Testimony from the single warrior of the action, a trooper named Yeon Bak, then employed as part of the shell-carrying train, reports that the danger went unnoticed at first owing to the thunderous din of their own guns. The first he saw of their plight was when a lance of burning heat—like the blast from a meltagun, only far more focused and prolonged—instantly incinerated the troopers in front of him and bisected a Sentinel power-loader nearby in a single sweeping arc. Bak attributes to luck the fact that he and his fellows were on the return to retrieve more shells or the munitions would have surely ignited and he would have been instantly killed. He describes a huge black shape buzzing past directly over his head as he threw himself into cover, and looking up in shock he saw the sides of the spire-towers around the armoured column crawling with multi-segmenied robotic insects of nightmarish size. Identified by the logisters of the Ordo Xenos as "Acanthrites" these machine constructs propelled themselves downwards onto the trapped Tekarn forces on tenebrous wings of shadowy force, slicing apart armoured vehicles with their cutting beams before descending to smash and hack apart the survivors with bladed limbs and energy-wreathed stingers. Anarchy quickly descended on the Tekarn as, trapped so close to each other; their tanks could not manoeuvre or bring their weapons to bear without hitting one another and their own troops, with no less than general slaughter ensuing. Tekarn Commando units, attached to the armoured battalion, sought to counter the attack with concentrated bursts of hellgun fire and man-portable plasma weaponry, but this counter attack was Quickly overwhelmed when huge, rapidly moving arthropod-like constructs erupted from the ground beneath the Tekarn and sealed the trap. These killing machines, moving with blurring speed, were able to pass through solid matter at will. Swiftly they completed the massacre, smashing through the remaining battle tanks, the carcasses of the Tekarn Guardsmen dismembered and sent spinning away as the killing machines tore past. The entire 234th Battalion met its end in a span no greater than twenty standard minutes, with trooper Yeon Bak surviving by crawling into a sewer culvert and being swept away, later to be summarily executed for cowardice in the face of the enemy.
死亡从空中和地下同时降临到英勇的Tekarn营卫军们身上。相关口供来自于参加此次行动的一名战士——某个名为亚昂 巴克的普通坦克兵，他当时被部署为了炮弹运输队的一员。根据巴克的报告，由于己方的火炮发出了雷霆般的轰鸣声，卫军们起初并没有注意到危险。当一发炽热的光矛（像是一道热熔爆炸能量束，但能量远为集中，持续时间也长得多）瞬间将他面前的士兵们化为灰烬，并将旁边的一辆装弹用哨兵机甲一分为二时，巴克才第一次看出了己方的困境。不过巴克是幸运的，事实上，（当时）巴克和战友们正在返回去取回更多弹药——这些弹药原本会被点燃，他们原本也会被瞬间杀死。他描述称，当自己躲入掩体时，一个巨大的黑色物体带着嗡嗡声直接从他头顶飞过；当他震惊地抬起头时，看到装甲圆柱周围的塔尖两侧爬满了噩梦般大小的多节机器昆虫。这些被攘外修会逻辑士们识别为“针尾幽魂”的机械构造体乘着幽暗力量构成的黑色翅膀，向被困的Tekarn营俯冲而下。它们用切割光束切开装甲载具，之后它们降落下来，撞向幸存者们，并用利刃般的肢体和缠绕着能量的毒刺将其砍碎。由于彼此过于靠近，Tekarn营被困，混乱状态很快便降临了；坦克们在进行机动或用武器开火时，必然会击中彼此和己方（步兵）部队，随后到来的必然是大规模屠杀。配属到装甲营的Tekarn突击队试图用地狱枪和人力便携式电浆武器的集中开火射击进行反攻，当巨大且快速移动的节肢动物状构造体从地下钻出来，并将陷阱封死时，反击攻势很快就被击溃了。这些杀戮机器以令人看不清的速度移动着，能够随意穿过固态物质。这些杀戮机器很快就完成了完成了屠杀，它们急驰而过，撞穿了剩余的战斗坦克，卫军们的尸体也被肢解并卷走。在不到20个标准分钟的时间内，Tekarn第234装甲营就被毁灭了。坦克兵亚昂 巴克爬入了下水道并被冲走，因此得以幸免，之后他由于在面对敌人时怯懦畏战而被仓促处决。
