HH3节译：暗鸦突围（1）
The Raven Guard's ninefy-hght day
暗鸦守卫的九十九天
In the aftermath of the Dropsite massacre, all was anarchy and ruin on Isstvan V. Of those Space Marine Legions that had been betrayed to their deaths, those few who had survived knew despair and horror. Confronted with treachery of such scale and the terrible killing power ranged against them, each Legion reacted according to its own nature and demeanour. The Salamanders cast themselves wholesale into the searing crucible of war though confronted by unassailable odds, the majority never to return. The Iron Hands, driven beyond reason by the inconceivable spectacle of their Primarch, the Gorgon, beheaded by his own brother, were consumed by unreasoning hate. The Raven Guard, however, were different. Guided by their own nature, the Raven Lord's legacy carried his remaining sons not towards the fire, but away from it to the shadows. Corax had survived, and this factor above all others was to be the salvation of his Legion.
在登陆点大屠杀之后，伊斯特万五号各处都是废墟，处于一片混乱之中。在那些因遭遇背刺而毁灭的星际战士军团中，极少数的幸存者们知道了（何为）绝望和恐怖。面对如此规模的背叛和向他们凶猛扑来的恐怖杀戮力量，各个军团都根据自己的天性与行为习惯做出了反应。尽管面临着不可战胜的绝境，火蜥蜴军团还是把自己全部军力投入了残酷的战争，大部分军团战士也就再也未能归来；钢铁之手的原体——“戈耳工”费鲁斯 马努斯被自己的兄弟砍下了头颅，这一不可思议的场景将军团战士们逼到失去理智，他们被非理性的仇恨所吞噬。但暗鸦守卫则不同，在他们自己的天性的指引下，渡鸦之主的（基因）遗产让他剩下的子嗣们并未冲向战火，而是远离战场躲入阴影之中。克拉克斯幸存了下来，这也是他的军团能够得救的最重要原因。
Swiftly upon divining the merciless trap enclosing around the Loyalists at the dropsite, he ordered a general extraction of his Legion as soon as he had extricated himself from direct and bloody confrontation with his brother-Primarchs turned foes: Lorgar and Curze. Here the Raven Guard's longstanding arts of war, focused upon rapid manoeuvre and hit and run, made telling difference. Protocols long practised by the Raven Guard enabled a plan for a swift, fighting withdrawal to be enacted despite the havoc that engulfed them. Battle-cant rendezvous and emergency dispersal coordinates were code-burst across the Legion's command net by Corax, using phrases and idioms dating back to the Lycaean Uprising. Corax rightly suspected his Legions command and control net was compromised and this fact alone would save many of his Legionaries' lives.
一经发现登陆点形成了包围着忠诚派们的无情陷阱，克拉克斯便命令军团进行全军撤退——当时他刚刚摆脱了与科兹和珞珈的血腥且直接的对抗——这两位原体曾是他的兄弟，现在则转变为他的敌人。此时此地，暗鸦守卫那注重快速机动和游击战的长期战争技艺使他们（的命运）产生了显著的差异。尽管惨遭劫难，但暗鸦守卫长期践行的信条使他们能够进行一次快速的战斗撤退。通过军团的指挥网络，克拉克斯用密码将战场集合点与紧急疏散坐标大量发送给军团战士们，并使用了可以追溯到Lycaean起义时期的惯用语。克拉克斯正确推测出暗鸦守卫军团的指挥和控制网络遭到了破坏，这一事实挽救了很多军团战士的性命。
As his Legion began its fight out of the killing zones, Corax went to the aid of a body of his sons cut off by a mass of Word Bearers. The Raven Lord himself was an umbra-clad storm of death, his eyes blazing wells of hatred, savage and merciless in his vengeance and yet not without purpose. He had lost one lightning claw in battle against his twisted kin, the Night Haunter, but where the other lashed out, his every blow cut an enemy Legionary to ragged shreds and cast steaming viscera on to the thirsting black sands, and when he took to the sky upon his black- pinioned flight pack, it was to descend once more to scythe down scores of Traitors and to rescue pockets of Loyalists who had been cut off and surrounded, falling like lightning on their attackers and allowing them to break out of the killing ground.
在他们军团开始从杀戮区突出重围的同时，克拉克斯前去救援那些被大量怀言者们切断退路的暗鸦守卫军团战士群体们。渡鸦领主本人是一阵被阴影所裹覆的死亡风暴，他眼中闪烁着憎恨，进行野蛮无情但绝非毫无目的的复仇。在与自己那位扭曲的兄弟——午夜幽魂交战的过程中，克拉克斯遗失了一只闪电爪，但他还能用另一只闪电爪凶猛进攻。他施出的每一次进攻都将一名敌对的军团战士劈为碎块，并将他们冒着热气的内脏丢在抛在饥渴的黑色沙地上。他利用黑色羽翼形状的背包飞往高空，之后再次落下，砍倒数十名叛军，解救出一群被围困和切断退路的忠诚派战士。原体如同闪电般落到进攻者们头上（来发起进攻），以让被围困者们逃出杀戮区。
The Raven Lord's defiance and rage was not unreasoning, but channelled into a single purpose——to allow time for his sons to fight their way clear of the murderous anarchy of the Urgall Depression. Squad by squad, company by company, the Raven Guard disengaged from the Traitors, Legion reconnaissance squads using the general chaos to identify extraction routes and muster points in the wastes beyond. The sable-clad Moritats of the Legion stalked the battlefield too, seeing this dark hour as their time come to fulfil their direst purpose and find bloody redemption, falling upon enemies the recon squads could not circumvent, many selling their lives dearly so that the doom of their entire Legion might be averted. Less than an hour after the Traitors great act of betrayal commenced and the massacre began in earnest； all who would escape the Urgall Depression alive were fighting their way through the enemys rearguards and streaming through the hills, and those who could not reach them were now doomed. All that is apart from Corax himself who was by now surrounded by many thousands of Traitors in the sea of carnage and fire at the centre of the cauldron of battle, ever shrinking in size at the centre of the dropsite. Though Corax had slain hundreds and could have killed hundreds more given leave, even one as mighty as a Primarch would in time have been overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers that pressed in from all quarters.
渡鸦之主的反击和怒火并非是毫无理智的，而是以一个目标为导向——他要为子嗣们争取时间，让他们能够从Urgall洼地致命的混乱战场上杀出一条生路。一个小队接着一个小队，一个连队接着一个连队得，暗鸦守卫们摆脱了叛军，军团侦查小队们利用这种整体混乱的状况在废土之外的区域确定了逃离路线和集结点。军团中身披黑甲的暗杀精英们也潜行进入了战场，他们将此黑暗的时刻视作自己完成最可怕的目标并寻求血腥救赎之时，向侦查小队无法避开的那些敌人发起了猛攻，许多人不惜牺牲自己的生命来阻止整个军团可能遭受的毁灭。在遭遇叛徒们严重的背叛之举和开始于（洼地）最东侧的屠杀不到一个小时后，所有那些将会活着逃出Urgall洼地的部队都在从敌军前锋中杀出一条血路并从山丘间鱼贯逃脱，而那些未能抵达安全区的部队现在则被屠杀殆尽。但科拉克斯本人除外，他现在处于这片沸腾战场的中心，被数千名叛徒包围在屠杀和炮火的海洋中。叛军将原体围在登陆场的中心，而且包围圈一直在缩小。虽然克拉克斯已经杀掉了数百名叛军，而且条件允许的话他还能再杀掉数以百计的叛徒，但面对着从四面八方压过来的敌人，哪怕是如同原体这般强大的人物迟早也会被纯粹的数量所压倒。
With hordes of Traitors closing in on the now isolated Corax and a storm of fire scything through the air, a single Raven Guard Thunderhawk gunship successfully descended from the fire-streaked skies against the odds, and blasted a landing zone nearby the Primarch. Having boarded, Corax remained at the open assault ramp, and it is said his black eyes burned as he cursed the numberless hosts even as the gunship rose once more, the backblast of its rocket engines making a pyre for the betrayed dead that had fought to the last alongside their lord.
成群的叛徒们包围了现在孤身一人的克拉克斯，这时一阵火焰风暴掠过天空，一架暗鸦守卫雷鹰炮艇抵抗住了千难万险，从留有火焰条纹的天空上成功降下，并在原体附近炸出了一片降落区。登上炮艇后，科拉克斯留在了敞开的突击坡道处。据说哪怕当炮艇再次起飞时，原体也还在诅咒着无数的叛军部队，同时他黑色的眼睛中燃烧着怒火。炮艇火箭引擎的尾焰为惨遭背叛的死者们进行了火葬，这些战士与自己的领主并肩作战直到最后。
The Thunderhawk was commanded by the Legions Master of Descent, Strike Captain Alvarex, the officer responsible for leading the Legions planetary landings. Unwilling to countenance the loss of his Primarch, Alvarex had ordered his command Thunderhawk to negotiate the burning skies above the dropsite, whilst evading enemy fire that had brought dozens of other vessels plummeting to the corpse-strewn ground. Though the pilot's skill, determination and luck held for long enough to reach Corax and to ensure the Primarch was embarked, they could not hold forever. Inevitably, the sheer weight of fire directed at the Thunderhawk shredded its armoured skin, tore one wing clean off and ripped its cockpit canopy wide open, slaying both pilot and co-pilot in an instant. Wrestling with the ruined controls even as the cockpit burned around him, Strike Captain Alvarex fought to arrest the stricken gunship's terminal descent, turning what would have been a catastrophic crash into a controlled landing. Though most of the crew were slain and the Strike Captain badly wounded, the Primarch survived thanks to Alvarex Mann's dedication and sacrifice, the two rejoining the Legion as the sun finally set on that great day of betrayal.
指挥这艘雷鹰炮艇的是军团空降大师——打击连长阿瓦莱克斯，他是负责领导军团行星登陆行动的军官。他不愿眼看着原体丧生，便命令自己的指挥雷鹰炮艇闯过登陆点上方燃烧着的天空，同时躲避着敌人的火力——已有数十艘其他舰船被叛军炮火击落在了布满尸体的地面上。飞行员的技术、决心和运气维持了足够长的时间，长到足以让他们抵达科拉克斯所在的区域并确保原体登船，但这些条件不会永远维持下去。直接集中雷鹰炮艇的强大火力不可避免地撕碎了它的外层装甲，一只机翼被完全扯掉，驾驶舱顶盖被撕开，驾驶员和副驾驶都被瞬间杀死。尽管驾驶舱在他周围燃烧着，但打击连长阿瓦莱克斯还是努力控制着损坏的控制台，最终奋力阻止了被击中炮艇的坠落，将一次原本要发生的灾难性坠毁事故转变为了一次受控的着陆。尽管许多船员不幸遇难，打击连长本人受伤严重，但也是由于阿瓦莱克斯•曼恩的奉献和牺牲，原体才得以幸免。当太阳终于落山，这发生背叛暴行的漫长一天终于过去时，原体与打击连长重新回到了军团。
The Night of Butchery
屠戮之夜
All that remains of the first night on Isstvan V is a scattering of fragmentary accounts, many of them entirely contradictory. Some survivors later spoke of tides of Traitors surging across the hills in a berserk frenzy, howling for the blood of the survivors. Others described a deep, sonorous chanting that rolled through the valleys like thunder and stirred dread in the hearts of those still loyal to the Emperor. Still other evidence shows bands of Traitors descending on isolated Loyalists and tearing them apart in an atavistic savagery, while circling gunships loosed fire indiscriminately, little caring of who they slew so long as it was not their own. How many battles raged throughout that night cannot be known, for every Legionaiy fought his own bitter war for survival.
关于伊斯特万五号上第一夜发生的事情，仅存的所有资料就是一些碎片化的报告。某些幸存者后来声称：潮水般的叛军在山丘间狂暴地涌动肆虐，嚎叫着要夺取幸存者们的鲜血。另一些人则描述了一种深沉且洪亮的吟唱声，它像雷声一样响彻山谷，在那些仍然忠于皇帝的人心中激起了恐惧。其他证据表明叛军们成群结队地找到那些孤立的忠诚派们，并以返祖的野蛮残忍将对方撕裂；同时盘旋在空中的炮艇不分青红皂白地开火射击，只要对方不是他们自己军团中的成员，他们就不在乎自己杀的是谁。我们无法得知那一整个夜晚中发生了多少次战斗，因为每名军团战士都在为自己的生存而进行着苦涩的战争。
Even as the main body of the foe harried the Raven Guard from behind, others fell upon them from above as they passed along the cracked ravines. Few Legionaries had any ammunition to spare, and so most of these battles were fought with fists and combat knives. When individual Raven Guard fell, their brothers made impossibly valiant attempts to rescue them from the howling, blood-maddened foe. Those who could walk bore those who could not, the withdrawal ever teetering on the edge of being overrun. But by the time the wan light of Isstvan V’s sun appeared on the horizon, barely penetrating the tortured, smoke-stained skies, the bulk of the surviving Raven Guard had broken free of their pursuers, finding sanctuary in the maze-like ravines beyond the Urgall Hills, for a brief time at least.
敌军主力在背后袭扰着暗鸦守卫军团，而当第十九军团穿过裂谷时，其他敌军也从山上冲下来扑向他们。几乎没有哪位军团战士还有任何备用的弹药，这些战斗中的大部分都是以拳头和战斗匕首作为武器。当一位暗鸦守卫倒下时，他的兄弟们会做出了不可思议的勇敢尝试，试图从嚎叫着疯狂嗜血的敌人手中拯救他。能够行走的人们拖着那些不能移动的伤兵，撤退行动一直在徘徊在超时的边缘。但当伊什特万五号的太阳出现在地平线上，阳光几乎穿透了倍受折磨且烟雾弥漫的天空时，大部分幸存的暗鸦守卫都已经摆脱了追兵，在Urgall山外迷宫般的峡谷中找到了避难所——他们至少在短时间内是安全的。
As the Raven Guard were fighting alongside their Primarch, those Legionaries unable to escape the noose of the Traitor armies were being systematically butchered. As the tides of war receded, the Traitors stalked the battlefield, knee deep in the shattered bodies of their erstwhile kinsmen, seeking the dying that they might deliver death. Others sought out the wounded in order to perform abominable tortures upon their already ruined flesh. Some Traitor Legions piled their own dead on to great pyres so that their deaths might be honoured as the growing flames licked the blackened skies. The World Eaters are known to have performed one of the basest acts of savagery that day by butchering the dead and dying, decapitating them, flensing the flesh from their skulls and piling these in massive ossuary-cairns. The Word Bearers, following the teachings of their damned Primarch, enacted their own victory rituals, the terrible significance of which is now all too well known to us.
当暗鸦守卫随同自己的原体奋战时，那些未能逃出叛军圈套的军团战士们遭到了系统性的屠戮。随着战争潮水退却，叛军们趾高气扬地走进战场，在昔日族亲破碎的尸体间单膝跪地，寻找他们可以杀戮的垂死之人。其他人则去找伤者，目的是对他们已经残破的肉体施以令人发指的折磨。一些叛徒军团把自己人的尸体堆在巨大的柴堆上以进行火葬，以此来向他们的死亡表示敬意，火焰越烧越旺，火舌舔舐着黑暗的天空。众所周知，吞世者军团在那天做出了最卑鄙的野蛮行为之一：他们屠杀死者和垂死之人，砍掉他们的头，把他们的头骨剥皮并堆成巨大的颅骨京观。怀言者军团遵循着他们受诅咒原体的教导，进行着他们自己的胜利仪式——这一事件的可怕意义现在已为我们所熟知。
As if to heap infamy upon ignominy, the Traitors began another, still worse mutilation of the fallen. Tens of thousands of corpses had their Progenoid glands —the implant that bears the Space Marines' gene-seed by which the Legions themselves are propagated— torn bloodily from them, for what fell purpose few would dare speculate.
仿佛是要耻上加耻一般，叛徒们又开始对死者进行更恶劣的残害。数万具尸体被血淋淋掏出了地掏出来基因存收腺体——这个植入器官中包含着军团用于自我繁衍的星际战士基因种子，其目的几乎没人敢去猜测。
The Heavens Aflame
天火降临
Even as the Raven Guard slipped their howling pursuers, yet another torment was visited upon the war-shattered surface of Isstvan V. The flaming hulks of those Loyalist war ships caught in the Traitors’ ambush now began their inexorable and fatal descent. The vox-nets shrieked as if in pain, stuttering machine code and screaming feedback interspersed with hopeless pleas for aid. The few Techmarines and Masters of Signal left in the Raven Lord's force fought in vain to establish a two-way link with the source. Soon however, the tortured, smoke- wreathed skies were lit orange by flickering conflagrations high above the clouds and the growl of stratospheric explosions rolled over the surface like distant thunder. From horizon to horizon, the clouds churned with unimaginable energies as Loyalist and Traitor alike paused to look upwards. Then the first fragment not incinerated by the fires of re-entry speared downwards, parting the clouds and smashing into the ground with a force equal to a planetary bombardment. The resulting explosion scoured a crater a hundred metres across and sent up a mushroom cloud tens of thousands of metres into the atmosphere. Moments later, searing debris rained down and a wave front of ashen smoke smothered all. It was the first of many hundreds of impacts that would fall upon the embattled planet's surface over the coming days, weeks and months, wreaking indiscriminate destruction upon Loyalist and Traitor alike.
就在暗鸦守卫摆脱了那些嚎叫着的追捕者的同时，伊斯特万五号饱受战火摧残的地表又遭受了另一种折磨。那些在叛军伏击中被摧毁的忠诚派战舰燃烧着的残骸现在开始发生无情且致命坠落。音频通讯网痛苦地尖叫着，断断续续的机器代码和哀嚎着的回复中夹杂着绝望的求救。暗鸦守卫部队中极少数留存下来的技术军士和通讯主管们努力建立着与信号源的双向联系，但却徒劳无功。然而，烟雾缭绕的天空很快就被云层上方闪烁的烈火映为了橙色；平流层爆炸的咆哮声响彻地面，就像远处传来的雷声。在整个地平线上，云朵都带着难以想象的能量翻滚着，忠诚派和叛军都停下来抬头仰望这一场景。之后，第一片未能被再入大气层时的烈火所焚化的碎片向下方刺去，它们冲破云层，以相当于行星轰炸的力道撞向地面。由此造成的爆炸形成了一个一百米宽的陨石坑，并使大气层中出现了数万米高的蘑菇云。片刻之后，灼热的碎片如雨点般落下，一波又一波的灰烬烟尘笼罩着一切。而这仅仅是第一次，在接下来的数天、数周乃至数个月中，此类撞击还会发生数百次，而这些撞击会对忠诚派和叛军们同样造成毁灭。
With the wreckage falling from orbit overwhelming the vox-net with impenetrable interference and the choking debris drastically curtailing visibility, the Raven Guard pressed ever deeper into the cracked land beyond the Urgall Hills, a vast, broken region called the Illium Rifts. By dusk on that second day, little definite had been learned of the fate of the Iron Hands and the Salamanders, and so Corax was seen to pace the outer limits of the rifts, his gaze dark, his humours swinging violently between choler and melancholy. Several times he led his chosen warriors out into the hills in search of his lost Raven Guard sons, and any others of the Loyalist force who might survive yet. Several times he returned with Raven Guard Legionaries, having come upon them in the hills.
从轨道上坠落的残骸形成无法被穿透的（电磁）干扰，这令暗鸦守卫的音频通讯网络崩溃；而且令人窒息的碎片也严重降低了（大气）能见度。暗鸦守卫（只能）不断深入Urgall山丘之外的破碎地带，这一片巨大破碎的区域被称为Illium裂谷。等到第二天黄昏时分，暗鸦守卫军团还是未能了解到关于钢铁之手和火蜥蜴军团命运的准确信息，因此人们看到科拉克斯在裂谷的外侧边缘踱来踱去，他目光阴沉，情绪在愤怒和忧郁之间剧烈地摇摆。他数次率领自己选中的战士们外出进入山丘间，寻找自己迷失的暗鸦守卫子嗣与其他可能幸存着的忠诚派部队。他也数次带着暗鸦守卫军团战士回来回来——这些战士都是克拉克斯在山丘上碰到的。
Signs of other survivors having broken free of the massacre at the Urgall Depression were found all about, many in the form of tracks terminating in the broken corpses of once proud warriors run to ground like cornered animals. Throughout the night, still more scattered bands of Raven Guard staggered into the refuge, many wounded almost beyond the ability to fight, in body and in mind. Of all the horrors they had witnessed, of all the hurts they had withstood during the wars of the Great Crusade, here was an entirely new phenomenon. The betrayal that had split the Legiones Astartes in twain had inflicted upon them a wound no other foe had ever struck—for the first time in the experience of any present, the vaunted spirit, wrought by the hand of the Emperor himself was stretched unto breaking point.
其他从Urgall洼地大屠杀中逃生的幸存者的迹象随处可见，其中大部分都是足迹：曾经高傲的战士们像走投无路的动物一样遭到猎捕，这些足迹一直延伸到（其）残破的尸体上。在整个晚上，更多破碎的暗鸦守卫战帮蹒跚着进入避难区，其中很多人在生理和心理上都几乎失去了战斗能力。伊斯特万五号上出现的是一种全新的现象，暗鸦守卫们在大远征时期的战争中目睹过的所有恐怖事物、经受过的全部伤痛都与之不同。这场背叛把阿斯塔特军团们分裂为两半，它对星际战士施加了其他敌人所不能造成的创伤——他们那由帝皇本人亲手铸就的高傲精神有生以来第一次达到了崩溃的边缘。
