HH9节译：黑暗天使军团战争配置

War Disposition

Horus chose the moment to raise his banner carefully, setting plans to have those Legions that threatened his revolt divided and distant from the fighting that would decide the fate of the Imperium. The Dark Angels, ever on the move and split across the vast territory of the Imperium, had been subtly divided by the orders of the new Warmaster, set to patrols and campaigns far from Terra and deared away from the northern bounds of the Emperor's domains. A significant portion of the Legion had gathered under Lion Eljonson and been dispatched beyond the bounds of the Imperium in the galactic east, beyond news of what was to come and far from those who might call upon them for aid. Both Caliban and Gramarye had seen a sudden drop in shipments of crucial supplies and news from the far front of the Great Crusade, all blamed on the vicissitudes of war rather than the hidden orders of the Warmaster, leaving them gradually more isolated and vulnerable. To any conventional assessment of military strength, the Dark Angels had been forced into a corner before even the first rebel cannon was fired at Isstvan.

荷鲁斯仔细选择了高举反旗的时机，他设计让那些威胁到他的叛乱的军团分散开，并且远离那些将会决定帝国命运的战争。在新任战帅的命令下黑暗天使军团被微妙地分散开，他们不断前进并分开对抗帝国中的重大威胁，负责在远离泰拉的地区巡逻和作战，荷鲁斯使他们离开了帝皇疆域的北部边境。军团中相当大部分的部队集结到了莱昂 艾尔庄森麾下，他们被派遣到银河东部帝国边境以外的地区，不知道将会发生什么，也远离那些可能向他们求援的人们。卡利班和Gramarye都发觉了关键补给运输量的突然下降，也收到了来自大远征遥远前线的消息，但一切都被归咎于战争无常变化而非战帅的隐藏命令，这令第一军团更为孤立和易受伤害。从任何对于军事实力的常规评估来看，哪怕早在大叛乱打响第一炮之前，黑暗天使就已经被逼到了角落。

Of their full strength, most likely somewhere slightly less than 200000 warriors, no more than a third had been dispatched alongside the Lion and placed beyond the reach of the Imperium. This left perhaps 120,000 Dark Angels active along the borders of the Imperium, mostly clustered to the galactic south and west in small battleforces of no more than 5,000 warriors. Most of these forces were either heavily engaged in prosecuting difficult campaigns or fresh from the fields of victory and still counting the toll upon their strength. Few had been given the opportunity to make contact with either the upper echelons of their own Legion’s command or that of the Divisio Militaris that co-ordinated Great Crusade deployments,and the Primarch Lion Eljonson remained far from the reach of his Legion with no news of his progress or the fate of the troops that accompanied him. The Dark Angels that remained were in essence blinded and by accepted military logic exhausted and as such Horus, his strategists and co-conspirators deemed such small forces to be of negligible threat to their plans, that isolated from any central command they would be unable to mount any real opposition to the rebellion.

黑暗天使军团的全部兵力大概是不到200000名战士，不到三分之一的成员被派去随同莱昂前往帝国边境之外的地区作战。剩下的大概120,000名战士沿着帝国的边境活动，他们大多结成不到五千人的小规模战斗部队，聚集在银河的南部与西部。这些部队中的大部分要么是陷在极其艰难的战斗中鏖战，要么就是从战场取胜后仍在计算自己的兵力损失。只有少数部队得到了与自己军团的高层指挥官和军务庭中负责协调大远征部署的官员进行联系的机会，而原体莱昂 艾尔庄森对他的军团而言仍然遥不可及，第一军团也不知道原体的进展如何，不清楚那些随同他作战的部队的命运。黑暗天使军团本质上仍然在遭受蒙蔽，荷鲁斯与他的战略谋士与盟友们也认为这些小规模部队对他们计划的威胁是微不足道的：他们被与所有中央指挥部隔离开来，无法对叛乱进行实质性的反抗。

They were sorely mistaken. Among all the Legions, the Dark Angels' complex system of Wings and Orders had long defied any foothold to Horus' treacherous warrior lodges, denying that insidious seed of corruption that had stymied so many other Legions' ability to react swiftly to the news of Horus’ perfidy. Nor were the Dark Angels distracted by the confusion that afilicted the Imperium's control channels in the immediate aftermath of the Isstvan revolt, for they had long disdained to subject themselves to the direct oversight of the Imperium's authorities. Where other Legions and fleets scrambled to react to the unified onslaught of the Traitor forces and struggled to combat the influence of the Warmaster within their own ranks, the Dark Angels fleets each took initiative on their own and met this new challenge head-on. Purposefully kept to the outskirts of the initial conflict by the Warmaster's machinations, the Dark Angels Knight-praetors set their Chapters upon those outlying worlds that dared to openly espouse loyalty to the Warmaster, deprived of the chance to directly strike against Horus' new centres of power. The Dark Angels turned their disadvantage to opportunity, each fleet an unpredictable threat to the Traitors and their allies, and more than capable of annihilating forces larger than their limited numbers might suggest. The destruction and chaos they wrought kept many systems and industrial centres along the southern and western galactic rims from supplying the main rebel force as well as threatening the Death Guard home world of Barbaras and slowing the rate of troops from that key world to the front. 

但他们大错特错。在所有军团中，黑暗天使军团翼军和修会的复杂体系长期令荷鲁斯煽动叛乱的战士结社找不到任何立足点，避免被植入潜在的腐化种子——这些种子阻碍了其他许多军团对荷鲁斯的背叛做出快速反应的能力。在伊斯特万事变刚刚结束后，黑暗天使军团也未被对于帝国控制渠道遭到削弱而产生的困惑分散注意力，因为他们长期以来都不屑于让自己接受帝国当局的直接监督。当其他军团和舰队还在艰难地应对叛军的集中进攻，并且挣扎着对抗战帅施加在他们自己部队中的影响时，黑暗天使军团舰队则发挥了各自的主动性，应对面前的新挑战。由于战帅的阴谋故意让黑暗天使军团位于初始冲突地区的外围，所以黑暗天使的骑士执政官们将他们的战团派往了那些胆敢公开效忠支持战帅的边远世界，被剥夺了直接攻击荷鲁斯新权力中心的机会。黑暗天使将他们的劣势转变为机遇，每支黑暗天使舰队对于叛军和他们的盟友来说都是不可预测的威胁，他们能释放出毁灭性的实力，远多于他们有限的数量所显示力量。他们造成的毁灭与混乱导致沿银河南部和西部边缘分布的众多星系与工业中心无力为叛军主力部队提供补给，他们还威胁到了死亡守卫军团的母星巴巴鲁斯，使死亡守卫军团放慢了从这个关键世界到前线之间的部署速率。

Even as the hastily-assembled Imperium task force headed to Isstvan V the Dark Angels were fully engaged at a dozen worlds far from Terra, utilising the terror weapons at their disposal to make examples of those Imperium worlds most vocal in their support of the Warmaster. The burned and poisoned husks of once-populous worlds were intended to bring a swift end to any insurrection, but could not stem the tide of rebellion that rose up in the wake of the dropsite massacre at Isstvan V and the momentum it granted to the rebel armies of the Warmaster. Despite this, the Dark Angels did not hesitate to destroy that which they could not hold in the Emperor's name, preferring to leave Horus as the Warmaster of an empire of ashes than allow their temporary weakness to cede him territory, with only the most heavily-fortified worlds proof against their onslaught. So for the first handful of years of the Horus Heresy the limited size of the Dark Angels companies restricted them to small scale raids, with many using the superior void craft of their attached fleets to take on the role of commerce raiders, cutting the throat of the Traitors’ supply chain. Gramarye and Caliban, while never directly attacked, were kept isolated from the greater war, both by the actions of Word Bearers esoterists and the strange powers they now wielded, and the disturbing silence from certain echelons of the Legion's leadership. The Dark Angels remained a potent force, but one divided and bereft of cohesive direction, at the time seemingly little more than a painful thorn in the side of the juggernaut Horus had aimed at Terra. Yet, with the advantage of hindsight, it is clear that by the actions of the raiding fleets of the First Legion, Horus was denied the early victory he craved, for the supplies they denied him and the chaos they sowed amid sectors that might otherwise have fallen to him without a shot fired slowed his advance just enough.

哪怕在仓促集结的帝国特遣部队前往伊斯特万五号时，黑暗天使军团就已经在远离泰拉的数十个世界上进行过大规模交战了，他们使用军火库中的恐怖武器惩戒了那些最为直言不讳地支持战帅的世界，以儆效尤。那些曾经人口稠密的世界被摧毁得剩下了焚灭有毒的地壳，任何暴动叛乱都被快速终结，但这样也遏制不住在伊斯特万五号登录点大屠杀之后兴起的叛乱浪潮以及变节世界投入战帅叛军的势头。黑暗天使军团无视了这一点，他们毫不犹豫地摧毁了他们无法以帝皇之名保住的一切，他们宁可让荷鲁斯成为一个余烬帝国的战帅，也不愿因自己暂时的软弱让叛军的疆土得以扩大，只有那些要塞化程度最高的世界才能抵御他们的屠杀。所以在荷鲁斯叛乱的最初数年，黑暗天使连队那有限的规模把他们的行动限制在小规模的掠袭作战，很多连队会将他们先进的虚空舰船用作掠袭舰，切断叛军补给线的咽喉。不过Gramarye和卡利班并未遭到直接攻击，他们与这场恶战隔离开来，这即是因为怀言者的隐秘术士与他们现在使用的奇怪力量，也是因为军团某些高层人员那令人不安的沉默。黑暗天使军团仍是一支强大的部队，但他们被分散了，也丧失了使之凝聚的方向，当时看来，他们似乎只不过是插入荷鲁斯指向泰拉的毁灭部队中的一根令人痛苦的刺。不过从事后来看，很明显第一军团掠袭舰队的行动使荷鲁斯未能得到他渴望的早期胜利——黑暗天使军团拖住了荷鲁斯的后勤，他们一枪未发便在那些可能落到了荷鲁斯手里的世界中散播了混乱，这恰好足以拖慢荷鲁斯的挺进。

The stubborn refusal of the Dark Angels to consolidate and grant Horus' lackeys a final decisive battle, a defiant and suicidal assault to express their anger and frustration, granted Dorn time to rally the remaining Loyalist elements around the Imperium's core. It also kept them from the series of massacres and last stands that plagued the Loyalists during the early years of the Horus Heresy, the carefully arranged decimation by which Horus had removed those obstacles that stood in his way. This carefully chosen strategy left the Dark Angels perfectly placed for the return of their lord, poised at the borders of Horus, fragile empire and ready for the Lion to give the word, to let loose the fetters of Imperial decree and give them leave to unleash all the fell tools they held ready for such a cataclysm. Horus' first gambit had failed, Terra remained outside his grasp and the First Legion stood ready to show him the terrible cost of his ambitions.

黑暗天使们顽强的抗争巩固了战果，他们与荷鲁斯的走狗们进行了一场决定性的战斗——这是一次展示他们的怒火与懊恼的自杀式挑衅进攻，这为多恩在帝国核心世界周围集合剩余的忠诚派部队夺取了时间。这也使他们远离了在大远征初期困扰着忠诚派的一系列大屠杀和决战——这些战役都是荷鲁斯为了清除自己前进道路上的障碍而精心安排的毁灭性屠杀。这种精挑细选的战略让第一军团为军团之主的归来做好了准备，他们沉着地奔向荷鲁斯脆弱帝国的边界，只待莱昂下令松开帝国法令的枷锁，批准他们释放出所有为这场灾厄而准备的残暴武器。荷鲁斯的第一步棋就已然失败了，泰拉尚在他的掌控之外，而第一军团早已准备好让他明白自己将会自己的野心付出何等惨重的代价。