HH6节译：战争铁砧（3）
Exposed and Measured
袒露真心，权衡利弊
Even as the bombardment cruisers and troop transports of the Alpha Legion and Iron Warriors moved into position high above Mezoa, Cassian Dracos, some measure of mobility restored to his Dreadnought shell by the arcane self-repair systems Vulkan had invested it with, led his Disciples of the Flames into the central forge-fane of Mezoa. There, the twice-dead master of the XVIIIth Legion met with the Norn-regents of Mezoa, a triad of ancient magos-sisters so interlinked by complex neural interface technology that they formed a single intelligence which directed the vast fiefdom of Mezoa. Their meeting is immortalised in the data-archives of Mezoa, the fire-blackened and battered shell of the Dragon Revenant confronting the emaciated forms of the Norn-regents, each of the three suspended spider-like in the complex web of technology that linked them to thralls across Mezoa, and flanked by a cohort of towering Domitar-automata. Yet at Dracos' approach the emotionless war machines fell back in halting steps, and even the stern trio of venerable tech-magi seemed taken aback.
就在阿尔法与钢铁勇士军团的轰炸巡洋舰和部队运输机于梅左阿高空（轨道）就位时，卡西安 德拉库斯（得益于伏尔甘赋予其无畏机体的神秘自我修复系统，他已经恢复出了一定程度的移动能力）率领自己的烈火门徒走入了中央铸造神殿。在这里，经历过两次死亡的第十八军团之主会见了梅左阿的三尊摄政——后者是三位古老的贤者姐妹，她们用复杂的神经接口结束将彼此极为紧密地连接起来，以至于形成了指挥掌管着梅左阿广阔封地的单一智能。这次会面（的信息）被永恒保存在了梅左阿的数据档案馆中：机体被烈火烧得焦黑且破烂不堪的复仇之龙，面见了躯体枯瘦的三尊摄政——每位贤者都犹如一只被悬吊在空中的蜘蛛状生物，她们身处一套复杂的技术网络中，被与梅左阿上的所有奴仆连接在一起。一支由高大的多米塔尔型机兵组成的大队护卫在摄政们的两侧。然而当德拉科斯接近时，这些毫无情感的战争机器踉跄着后退了几步，就连三位德高望重的严肃科技贤者似乎也吃了一惊。
There the ancient Terran warlord spoke of his visions, of the trials he had endured as he lay entombed within the dark heart of Isstvan V and of his search for Vulkan; a tale of woe and sacrifice that echoed the schismatic creed honoured by the magos of Mezoa. This simple similarity of belief seems a slim basis for the accord that followed, with Cassian Dracos feted as a living avatar of the Machine God by the dour tech-adepts of Mezoa, granted high station in the Taghmata formed for its defence and marked as a sign of impending victory; Later, scholars have wondered at the sudden acceptance Dracos met with the diverse groups he encountered, some even positing that Isstvan's position at the heart of one of the greatest warp storms ever encountered may have had an effect on the entombed Dreadnought more significant than previously thought.
这位古老的泰拉战将谈到了自己的愿景，讲述了他被埋入伊斯特万五号黑暗地下时所忍受的考验，以及他搜寻伏尔甘的经过；这个关于苦难和牺牲的故事正与梅左阿贤者们推崇的分离信条相呼应。这种信念上的简单相似性似乎就是双方之后能达成一致的薄弱基础；梅左阿阴郁的技术教士将卡西安 德拉库斯尊奉为了活生生的万机神化身，他们在组成星球防御力量的机神禁卫军中赠予了复仇之龙一个高级（指挥）席位，并视其为胜利即将到来的标志。遇到德拉科斯的不同群体都突然接纳了他，后来的学者们也对此感到惊诧，某些人甚至认为：由于伊斯特万星系处在人类遭遇过的规模最大亚空间风暴的核心处，其对这台被埋于地下的无畏机甲造成的影响可能比人们之前认为的更显著。
Attended by the most skilled of Mezoa's forge wrights, Cassian Dracos withdrew to the hidden depths of Mezoa, there to receive the benedictions of the Machine God and be restored to his former glory. With the dropcraft of the Traitor forces blackening the sky with their numbers even as their lord retired, Xiaphas Jurr led the Disciples of the Flames as they joined the warriors who stood ready to defend Mezoa. With them were the cybernetic monsters and towering automata of the Taghmata Mezoa, all veterans of centuries of xenos raids, as well as the 891st Lethe Cohort of the Solar Auxilia, and forty-eight Imperial Fists Legionaries whose flight from the fighting on Manachea had left them stranded at Mezoa. In total, some 12000 men-under-arms and took up positions to repel the coming storm, including a great mass of combat-automata, soul-shorn adsecularis auxilia and Knights of House Hermetika.
在技艺最精湛的梅左阿铸炉工匠陪同下，卡西安 德拉库斯撤往了梅左阿隐蔽的地下深处，他将在那里接受万机神的祝福，恢复起往日的荣光样貌。此刻，数量庞大到遮天蔽日的叛军空降艇也杀向地表；而就在他们主人撤退的同时，夏法斯 朱尔也率领着烈火门徒加入到准备保卫梅左阿的勇士队伍中。梅左阿的守军包括：机神禁卫军的智控怪物和高大的战斗机兵——它们都是对抗过数个世纪异形掠袭的老兵，Lethe第891太阳军兵团，28名帝国之拳军团战士——他们从Manachea联盟战争中逃出生天，之后被困在了梅左阿。这总计12000名武装人员——其中包括大量战斗机兵、无魂无魄的技术契奴辅助军与赫尔梅提卡家族的骑士——各就各位，抵抗着即将到来的风暴。
Of the earliest stages of the third invasion of defiant Mezoa, the greatest wealth of information comes from the war chronicles of Narik Dreygur, de-facto commander of the Iron Warriors 114th Grand Battalion. The first wave of the invasion was a vast throng of drop ships carrying thousands upon thousands of pact-conscripts from Moab and turncoat Imperial Army troopers, all considered eminently expendable by Autilon Skorr and the other commanders of the Traitor armada. These fallen souls were met not by the blast of defence cannon or flights of slaved Mechanicum droneinterceptors, but by the wrath of Mezoa itself as the great subduction furnaces sunk into the planet's volatile mantle were used to hurl vast projectiles of magma and bedrock skyward. Against such weapons the Traitor dropcraft had no protection, and casualties were devastating, indeed the tactical purpose of this first wave seems to have been more to provoke just such an attack as to establish a true beachhead. Those few drop ships that made it to the ash-choked surface of Mezoa were quickly decimated by cohorts of vicious Vorax battle-automata, the few survivors scattered into the hellish interior of Mezoa where none are known to have survived.
对于第三次梅左阿入侵行动的最早期阶段，钢铁勇士第114大营实质上的指挥官——纳雷克 德雷古尔的战争编年史提供了最丰富的信息。第一波入侵部队是巨量的空降艇，其上运载着成千上万来自Moab的契约奴兵和叛变的帝国军士兵——在奥帝龙 斯考尔和叛军舰队其他指挥官看来，这些凡人都是完全可供消耗的炮灰。但这些堕落的灵魂所遭受的并非防御火炮的轰击或受奴役的机械神教无人截击机的进攻，而梅左阿自身的怒火——浸入到星球地幔的巨大的潜沉熔炉，被用于将巨大的岩浆团与基岩块抛向天空。在这种武器面前，叛军的空降艇们毫无防卫，遭受了毁灭性伤亡。事实上，叛军第一波攻势的战术目的，似乎更像是为了引起这样一次进攻，以便建立起真正的桥头堡。只有极少数空降艇成功降落到遍布呛人灰烬的梅左阿地表，但也很快就被凶恶的沃拉克斯型战斗机兵组成的中队摧毁了，极少数幸存者分散到了地狱般的梅左阿内陆地区，无人知道该如何生存在那里。
Having correctly anticipated that the Mezoan adepts could not maintain a constant bombardment without compromising the tectonic stability of their own world, Autilon Skorr dispatched the 114th Grand Battalion as the core of the second wave. Grounding amid the corpses and blackened wreckage of the first wave, Dreygur and the grim veterans of the Iron Warriors, having weathered the more conventional anti-aircraft fire with minimal losses, were informed by Autilon Skorr of the Alpha Legion that any attempts to evacuate the planet's surface would be met by the guns of the fleet. With no option but victory, the Iron Warriors and those auxiliaries landed alongside them met the onrushing Loyalist counter-attack, quickly converting their drop ships into makeshift bastions. The battlefield lit by erupting magma-geysers and blanketed by Mezoa's ever-present ash clouds, the Iron Warriors fought with a ferocity that equalled any of Angron's berserker Legionaries, demanding a steep price in lives for each of them who fell. In the climactic battle of the first day, Narik Dreygur fought and slew Valtus Moran, a champion of the Imperial Fists, who had reached Mezoa, the battle-automata under his command tearing apart his corpse as the Loyalist forces quit the field.
但奥帝龙 斯考尔已经正确地预测到：梅左阿的教士们无法在不损坏该世界结构稳定性的情况下进行持续轰炸，他派出了第114大营作为第二波攻势的核心。纳雷克 德雷古尔和麾下冷酷的钢铁勇士老兵们一道，降落在了第一波进攻部队中士兵的尸体与烧焦的残骸中，他们在损失最小的情况下经受住了常规防空火力进攻；奥帝龙 斯考尔通知他们：从星球地表撤退逃离的任何尝试，都将引来舰炮的轰击。钢铁勇士们和降落在其周围的辅助军部队别无他选，只能取胜；他们遭受了忠诚派的猛烈反击，很快便将己方的空降艇转用作了临时堡垒。战场先是被喷涌而出的熔岩所点亮，继而又被梅左阿永恒的灰烬云所覆盖。钢铁勇士们以堪比安格隆麾下狂战士们的凶暴奋战着，对于倒下的每一位兄弟，他们都要让敌方付出惨痛的伤亡。在第一天战斗的高潮阶段，德雷古尔与逃亡到梅左阿的帝国之拳军团勇士——瓦尔图斯 莫兰对决并杀死了他，当忠诚派部队撤出战场时，纳雷克麾下的战斗机兵撕碎了莫兰的尸体。
The Iron Warriors had paid in the lives of their brethren to secure a safe landing zone for the remainder of the Traitor armada, and soon the ash plains at the edges of the great forge-fanes of Mezoa were awash in the footsoldiers of the Warmaster. Sokar class stormbirds, among the largest craft that could be safely landed on the fragile surface of Mezoa, were used to project an interconnected canopy of void shields above the vast encampment, a shield that was regularly tested by the ground-shaking impact of slabs of lava-coated bedrock. With both sides firmly entrenched, the Traitor forces used their advantage in numbers to press the attack on Mezoa's forge-fanes and their artillery trains, attempting to reduce the walls and fortifications to rubble from afar, while Autilon Skorr drove his massed auxilia into the breaches to force a hole in the defences. The Iron Warriors were committed wherever the enemy seemed strongest, suffering mounting casualties to blunt the ferocious assault of tbe Mezoan magos'automata cohorts, while the Alpha Legion operated as headhunters and raiders, taking advantage of the distraction provided by the massed assaults of their fellows to strike at vulnerable command installations and isolated command units.
通过牺牲自己兄弟们的生命，钢铁勇士们为叛军舰队的其他部队确保了一片安全的登陆区，战帅的步兵们很快就淹没了巨大铸造神殿边缘处的灰烬平原。能够安全降落在梅左阿脆弱地表的最大型飞行器之一——索卡尔型风暴鸟炮艇被派出，用于在这片巨大营区的上空投射出一道相互连接的虚空盾穹顶——这种护盾被证明能够阻挡覆盖着熔岩的基岩块那地动山摇的撞击。在双方都牢牢站稳脚跟后，叛军倚仗己方的人数优势，向梅左阿的铸造神殿与火炮队列群发起进攻，试图从远距离将城墙和防御工事夷为平地；同时奥帝龙 斯考尔驱赶自己麾下的大量辅助军部队冲向缺口处，想在敌军防线上撕开口子。钢铁勇士们被派往敌人最强大的区域，承受着不断增加的伤亡，以削弱梅左阿贤者们手中机兵大队的凶猛攻击；而阿尔法军团则作为猎头者与掠袭者来行动，利用同伴们的大规模进攻对敌方造成的分心效果，袭击脆弱的指挥设施与孤立的指挥单位。
The Loyalist forces did not sit idle while Autilon Skorr prosecuted his assault. While the heavy infantry of the Lethe Solar Auxilia units and Mechanicum siege-automata held the walls of Mezoa's spired forge-fanes, the Disciples of the Flames, operating in demicompanies of fifty men and reinforced by the remaining Imperial Fists, engaged in a series of spoiling attacks. As these assault forces sallied forth from the protection of the heavily fortified defences, the tech-adepts of Mezoa collapsed entire regions of the planet's crust, burying sections of the enemy's lines in tidal waves of magma and allowing the Legiones Astartes to engage isolated pockets of the foe. Elsewhere, suicide cohorts of automata and adsecularis drew detachments of the Traitor host out into the open where the tech-magi could obliterate friend and foe alike with blasts of magma.
但在奥帝龙 斯考尔发动袭击的同时，忠诚派们也并未坐以待毙。Lethe太阳军部队的重步兵和机械神教攻城机兵坚守着梅左阿尖塔铸造神殿的城墙，同时烈火门徒们编为五十人一组的半连编队，在剩余帝国之拳部队的增援下，进行了一系列破坏性袭击。当这些突击队从戒备森严的防御工事中突围而出时，梅左阿的技术教士们便会令整片区域的地壳崩塌，将敌人的部分防线淹没于岩浆波潮中，让阿斯塔特军团战士们与陷入孤立的敌人们交战。在其他战场上，自动机兵与技术契奴组成自杀部队，将叛军分队引到开阔地带，让技术贤者们用岩浆轰炸将敌我双方一并毁灭。
As with all things, the Mechanicum adepts of Mezoa kept detailed records of the fallen, both allied and enemy,the resulting equations informing all of their strategies, and despite the small victories that had been claimed against the Traitor horde, the cold logic of war did not favour Mezoa.
就像他们处理所有事项那样，梅左阿的机械神教教士对敌我双方的死者都进行了详细记录，由此生成的方程式为他们的战略提供了依据；尽管他们在对抗叛军部队的战斗中获取了小小胜利，但冷酷的战争逻辑并不偏爱梅左阿守军。
An Oath Fulfilled
履行誓言
For nine days Autilon Skorr directed the Traitor host in an unrelenting siege of the spired halls of Mezoa. Bombardment cruisers in high orbit rained down kinetic cluster munitions, and the Mezoan tech-priests responded with the white-hot blood of Mezoa itself launching chunks of the mantle skyward and filling the air with fragments of burning rock. The already torturous landscape of Mezoa buckled, venting scalding clouds of ash and steam that scoured entire battlefields clean, and tides of magma that engulfed armoured columns. Autilon Skorr brought hell to Mezoa.
在九天的时间里，奥帝龙 斯考尔一直在指挥叛军部队朝梅左阿的尖塔神殿发动无情围攻。位于高空轨道的轰炸巡洋舰密集投下动能集束弹药，梅左阿技术教士们则用梅左阿自身的白炽血液还击，他们将大块的地幔抛向空中，令空气中都充满了熊熊燃烧的岩石碎片。梅左阿本就倍受折磨的地貌变得扭曲狰狞，灰尘与水汽喷涌而出，形成的滚烫云团将整片战场冲刷干净，岩浆波潮也吞没了装甲纵队。奥帝龙 斯考尔将地狱带到了梅左阿。
From the fortified walls of the Mezoan forge-fanes, Xiaphas Jurr and the remaining Disciples of the Flames bore witness to the slow reduction of the Forge World's defences. With no hope of reinforcement, isolated as Mezoa was by the expansion of Horus' dark empire, there seemed little hope of victory. Despite this, it was quickly made obvious that regardless of the inescapable logic of their defeat, the defenders of Mezoa had no intention of surrendering. The Norn-regents had decreed that until the last automata fell, the battle for Mezoa would not end. Each Traitor attack was met by stubborn resistance, and while defeat might be inevitable, it would not be swift in arriving, a fact that would ill-please the Warmaster. This truth was not unknown to Autilon Skorr who, like most of the ambitious Legion officers that had thrown in their lot with the Warmaster, was eager to join the assault on Terra. Rather than wait for the eventual fall of Mezoa, Autilon Skorr intended to bring the Forge World to its knees with a single strike, hoping that the swift fall of the Loyalist Forge World would secure him a return to the favour of both Horus and his own inscrutable Primarch.
从梅左阿铸造神殿加固强化过的城墙上，夏法斯 朱尔和剩余的烈火门徒们目睹着铸造世界防线的缓慢缩减。由于梅左阿已经被荷鲁斯黑暗帝国的扩张所孤立出来，他们无望获得增援，获胜的希望似乎是微乎其微。但尽管如此，忠诚派们很快就明确表示：虽然失败是不可避免的逻辑推论结果，但他们无意投降。奥帝龙 斯考尔也知道这个真相，就像大多数投奔荷鲁斯的野心勃勃阿斯塔特军官那样，他热衷于加入进攻泰拉的行动。奥帝龙 斯考尔不想等待梅左阿世界的（缓慢）最终沦陷，他打算通过一击就让整个铸造世界屈服，希望这场快速攻陷忠诚派铸造世界的战役能让其重新获得荷鲁斯与自己那位神秘莫测原体的青睐。
The remains of the Iron Warriors 114th Grand Battalion were committed en masse to a frontal assault on the defences of Tertial-05, one of the key defence bastions on the outskirts of the main forge spire. The attack went ahead despite the protests of Consul Dreygur of the Iron Warriors, who only agreed to lead his men at the assurance of Autilon Skorr that the Alpha Legion would support the assault. The Iron Warriors struck the defences of Tertial-05 like a hammer blow, waves of heavy infantry advancing under heavy fire unflinchingly despite the casualties inflicted upon them. The assault quickly drew in defending units from across the battle zone, as Loyalist commanders reinforced the weakening defences. As the fighting ground on, the Iron Warriors were eventually brought to a halt, bogged down amongst the outer defences of Tertial-05 and surrounded by Loyalist units in a murderous crossfire. Dreygur ordered his warriors to set up makeshift defences and dig in in the Loyalist positions they had captured, his automata cohorts moving to counterattack wherever the Loyalists threatened to overwhelm the thinning Iron Warriors lines. Encoded vox-signals, later retrieved and deciphered by the magos of Mezoa, were transmitted to the Alpha Legion, calling on them to begin the second wave of the assault, but no answer was ever received by the embattled Iron Warriors who could not survive without support.
钢铁勇士第114大营的残部被全体派出，去正面进攻Tertial-05堡垒的防线——其是位于铸造主塔边缘区域的关键防御要塞之一。尽管钢铁勇士军团领事德雷古尔提出抗议，但行动仍旧进行，不过德雷古尔同意出战的前提是奥帝龙 斯考尔保证阿尔法军团会提供支援。钢铁勇士们如同重锤般攻向了Tertial-05堡垒的防线，尽管伤亡惨重，但这些身披重甲的步兵仍然前仆后继，顶着猛烈的炮火前进。而随着忠诚派指挥官们增强了此处被削弱的防线，这场进攻迅速吸引了来自战区各处的守军部队。随着战事推进，钢铁勇士们也最终陷入停滞，他们在Tertial-05堡垒的外层防线中陷入困境，并被忠诚派凶猛的交叉火力所包围。德雷古尔命令战士们构筑临时防御工事，并在其攻占的忠诚派阵地上深挖战壕；他的自动机兵大队们不断奔走于薄化中的防线各处，在忠诚派对其阵线造成压倒性威胁的各处发起反击。钢铁勇士们向阿尔法军团发送了加密音频通信信号（梅左阿贤者们之后将其找回并解密），呼叫对方开始发动第二波进攻；倘若没有支援，这些四面楚歌的钢铁勇士将无法幸存，但他们并未得到任何答复。
