HH6节译：战争铁砧之上的锤炼（2）
He does not walk among the Dead
怹不在死者之列
From the grim fortress of Baal, the Ebon Drake passed through the ever more turbulent currents of the Warp, directed to the distant star of Isstvan by her Navigator's deft hand and unfailing guidance. After leaving Baal, Xiaphas Jurr's journals indicate that he had thought to emerge once more at Port Maw, the Imperial navy's greatest anchorage along the Northern Fringe. However, in the wake of the incident at Baal, the Chaplain-Lieutenant decided to avoid further contact with the defenders of the Imperium, unknowingly avoiding translating into the midst of the Warmaster's fleet as it lay at anchor in the newly conquered docks of Port Maw.
离开巴尔阴森的要塞，乌木火龙号穿过愈发汹涌的亚空间乱流，在导航者巧手的不断指引下，她飞向了遥远的伊斯特万恒星。在离开巴尔后，夏法斯 朱尔的旅行记录表明：他曾考虑过在巨口港——帝国海军位于北部边境的最大锚地处再次进入现实宇宙。然而，在经历过巴尔上的事件后，牧师副官决定避免与帝国的守卫者们发生进一步接触。不知不觉中，乌木火龙号就没有一头扎入战帅舰队（的包围）内——叛军的舰船此刻就停泊在被新近征服的巨口港码头中。
Instead, the Ebon Drake held fast to her course towards Isstvan, braving the whirling aetheric vortex that scholars in these latter days believe was somehow summoned to form a cage around the northern-most systems of the Imperium, seeking not to bar passage but rather to contain something within its boundaries. Neither Navigator nor Astropath could pierce the veil this storm cast over the Isstvan System, yet the oaths sworn by her crew and the omens cast by Chaplain-Lieutenant Jurr in the flames of his votive forge forced the Ebon Drake onward despite the danger posed by such a voyage. Straining the protective geller field that protected them from the insanity of aetheric space, the Ebon Drake punched through the maelstrom and into the calm at its centre, the Isstvan System, where the damage sustained in their passage forced them to make an emergency translation at the system's edge.
乌木火龙号继续沿着航线飞往伊斯特万星系，她勇敢地穿过混乱汹涌的以太漩涡——后世学者相信，这团亚空间风暴是被以某种手段召唤出来的，目的在于围困住帝国最北侧的星系们；始作俑者并非试图阻断通路，而是要将某些事物控制在这片区域边界之内。导航者和星语者都无法穿透亚空间风暴在伊斯特万星系周围投下的帷幕，然而船员们曾发过誓言，牧师副官也在祈愿铸炉的火焰中看到了预兆，这迫使乌木火龙号不顾这趟航行所带来的危险，继续前行。在保护船员们免受以太空间疯狂（环境）影响的盖勒力场遭受重压的情况下，乌木火龙号穿过了漩涡，进入了亚空间风暴那平静的中心——伊斯特万星系，而途中遭受的损坏也迫使飞船在星系边缘紧急转入现实宇宙。
Bursting forth from the bowels of the Warp, the Ebon Drake translated into realspace prepared for battle, all gun batteries armed and manned, and every warrior of the Legiones Astartes aboard sworn to death before any surrender to the forces of the arch-Traitor. Yet, where they had expected to find the marshalled fleets of the Warmaster and worlds remade as a monumental and vile shrine to his treachery, they found only the cold remains of a battle long since fought and forgotten.
乌木火龙号从亚空间深处突破而出，做好战斗准备，进入了现实空间。船上的所有炮塔都被装填，炮手严阵以待；船上的每位阿斯塔特军团战士也都发下誓言，宣誓要在战死之前，他们将屠戮巨逆麾下的鹰犬。众人原本认为，自己会在伊斯特万星系中发现集结于战帅身侧的舰队，以及被改造为纪念其背叛行径的永恒邪恶圣所的世界；然而他们看到的，只是那场发生于很久之前的战斗所遗留的残余之物——而且这些痕迹已被遗忘。
In the gulf of space between the planets of the Isstvan System floated the hulks of those void craft of Legions, both Loyalist and Traitor, that were too damaged by combat to be easily salvaged, and on the cold surface of Isstvan V were only crude pits filled with the slain, all serviceable wargear long since stripped from their bodies. No vast armada waited on which they could vent their anger in valiant suicide and no grand palace had been raised to mark Horus' dominion over the world that was now the grave of Primarchs as a target for their wrathful pride. To those who have read the histories of the Horus Heresy, the actions of Horus amid the fringes of the Imperium, conquering and looting those worlds that remained loyal to the Emperor, are no doubt well known, but to the crew of the Ebon Drake they brought only more questions, none of which could be readily answered.
军团虚空舰船的庞大残骸漂浮在星系中各行星间的广阔空间中——既有来自忠诚派的，也有来自叛变方的；它们受损过于严重，以至于无法被回收。而在伊斯特万五号的地表，也只有被死者尸骸填满的简陋深坑，他们身上还能使用的一切战争装备都早已被剥去。在这个现在已经成为原体墓葬的世界处，没有可供船员们在英勇的自杀行动中发泄怒火的庞大舰队，也并未建造起标志荷鲁斯统治地位的恢宏宫殿——如果有的话，他们会将之作为展示自己愤怒高傲的目标。毫无疑问，那些已经读过荷鲁斯叛乱历史的人们，很清楚荷鲁斯在帝国在帝国边境处的所作所为——征服并劫掠那些仍旧忠于帝皇的世界；但对乌木火龙号的船员而言，他们心中只会产生更多疑问，而且这些问题都不是能被轻易解答的。
The Ebon Drake achieved high orbit over Isstvan V without incident, her crew more resentful of the absence of the enemy than relieved, as few among them could deny the sense of grim foreboding that their journey's end conjured within them. Despite the lack of opposition, it was some hours before any dropcraft left the Ebon Drake's hangar bays, for the sight of the lifeless, brutalised orb left in the wake of the Dropsite Massacre robbed all present of the flicker of hope that they might yet find the missing Primarchs alive. For three days they scoured the surface of the blasted planet; heavily-armed search parties roaming the dust plains almost at random, while in orbit Xiaphas Jurr cast augury after augury as he swept the Ebon Drake's sensors across the world in endless sweepconfigurations. All they found was ruin, wreckage and the silent corpses of the dead; no sign did they ever find of the missing Primarchs Vulkan, Ferrus Manus and Corvus Corax, either living or dead.
乌木火龙号顺利进入了伊斯特万五号的高空轨道。对于敌人们的缺席，船员们更多是感到愤恨而非宽慰，他们中几乎没人能否认自己心中的某个可怕预兆：他们的旅程即将结束。尽管并无敌手，但直到几个小时之后，空降艇才离开了乌木火龙号，因为众人眼前的世界，只是登陆点大屠杀结束后剩下的一颗倍受凌虐且毫无生气的星球；他们原本认为，自己可能会发现那些失踪的原体还活着，但眼前的镜像令这丝希望荡然无存。船员们花费了三天时间，搜索了这颗被炸毁星球的地表；武力充足的搜救队近乎漫无目的地探索着尘原，同时夏法斯 朱尔待在轨道上，一台接一台地查看着占卜仪（上的数据）——他用乌木火龙号的传感器无尽扫描这颗世界的各地。他们发现的只有废墟、残骸和死者沉寂的尸骸；对于沃坎、费鲁斯 马努斯与科沃斯 克拉克斯这三位失踪的原体，他们并未发现任何迹象，无论死活。
Then on the third day, directed by the now feverish half-dreams of Xiaphas Jurr who had not rested since their departure from Baal, the Ebon Drake's sensors detected an anomaly buried beneath a glass plain that marked the Traitors' use of atomics to finish the massacre —an object of unknown composition and of significant mass— broadcasting an almost undetectable signal in an exotic wavelength known to certain strata of the Salamanders' command echelons. Lacking any heavy machinery suited to delicate excavations, the post-human crew of the Ebon Drake tore open the fused ground with their bare hands and combat blades, working without pause and in ominous silence for another day to unearth the hidden signal and its origin.
等到第三天，夏法斯 朱尔陷入了极度兴奋的半梦半醒状态——他从离开巴尔后就再未休息过，在其指引下，乌木火龙号的传感器探测到了一个埋在某片玻璃化平原（其标志着叛军们用原子武器终结了大屠杀）之下的异常点——该物体成分不明且质量巨大，以某种奇异的波长广播着一个几乎无法被探测到的信号——火蜥蜴指挥梯队中的特定阶层才知道其波长。由于手头并无适合进行精细挖掘的重型机械，乌木火龙号的超人船员们用双手和战斗刀挖开了熔化（后又凝固）的地面，他们又在不祥的寂静中无休止地工作了一天，挖掘着那个隐藏的信号及其源头。
Once uncovered, it took the combined might of the three Iron Hands cataphractii to heft it from the clutches of Isstvan V's hungry maw, where it had lain for over a standard year, and bring it once more into the light of day.
在将物体挖出后，三名钢铁之手铁骑终结者合力将其伊斯特万五号饥饿的口中举出；在躺于此地一个标准年之后，它重见了阳光。
Though fused by unimaginable heat, scoured and blackened by atomic fire and abandoned to rot beneath the surfece of a dead world, what they tore from the dark heart of Isstvan V was still unmistakably the sarcophagus of a Legion Mark IV Dreadnought, all its limbs but the stump of its right arm shorn away by the violence of its final battle. The ornate heraldry worked into what remained of the hull proclaimed the identity of the machine to the Salamanders present: Cassian Dracos, the last mortal man to hold the title Master of the XVIIIth Legion, and the shattered readouts of his sarcophagus proclaimed that he yet lived. There, on the barren grey surface of Isstvan V,surrounded by the unburied dead and the shattered wreckage of his Legion, Xiaphas Jurr, with trembling hands, connected the sarcophagus to an external vox unit and the haunting, hypnotic voice of a man twice dead rumbled forth over the assembled warriors of three orphaned Legions.
尽管它（的外壳）被难以想象的高温所熔化，被原子火焰烧得焦黑，并被遗弃在了死亡世界的地下，但众人从地下挖出的物品无疑是一台四型军团无畏的石棺；除了右臂的残肢，这台无畏的（其他）肢体都被激烈的最后一战切断了。印在机体残骸上的华丽纹章向在场的火蜥蜴们表明了这台机器的身份：卡西安 德拉科斯，最后一名拥有过第十八军团之主的普通星际战士，而石棺的零碎读数表明其仍然活着。夏法斯 朱尔来到了伊斯特万五号的荒凉地表，在自己军团被曝尸的死者与破碎残骸的包围下，用颤抖的双手为石棺连接上一台外置音频单元，来自三个孤儿军团的战士们聚集着，听见那位复死者令人难忘的催眠性话语隆隆传来。
'You come seeking our father; but he is not here.
I searched for him on the field of battle until they struck me down with a sword of flame that scorched the very heavens, and yet I did not die.
I searched for him in the endless vaults of the dead where the crushing blackness tore at my very soul, and yet I endured.
I was tested once more in fire and in darkness, and passed again through the crucible, and I tell you this:
Vulkan does not walk among the dead!'
“你们前来寻找我们的父亲；但他并未身处此地。
我在战场上寻觅怹，直到他们用那柄烧焦天空的烈火利剑击倒我为止，然而我并未死去。
我在无尽的死者墓室寻觅怹，令人窒息的黑暗撕扯着我的全部灵魂，然而我忍受住了。
我在火焰与黑暗中再度经受考验，再次穿越那片惨烈混乱的战场，将此事告知诸位：
沃坎不在死者之列！”
The Warmaster's Rage
战帅之怒
Even as Cassian Dracos rose from the depths of Isstvan V bringing some measure of hope to the beleaguered Loyalists, the annals of the Horus Heresy were to grant them no reprieve from the Warmaster's relentless onslaught. The records of those scholars and archivists in the service of the Warmaster, later captured by servants of the Emperor, speak of a vast armada assembling at Port Maw, but a relatively short distance from Isstvan. Port Maw conquered by the forces of the Warmaster shortly after the outbreak of Mankind's civil war, was now the centre of a huge war machine gearing up for the conquest of all those dominions of the Emperor that refused to accept Horus as their rightful master. Here the assembled fleets of those Legions loyal to the Warmaster were refitted and repaired for the coming war, appropriating those resources once intended to supply the vast fleets of the Great Crusade.
尽管从伊斯特万五号地下被挖出后，卡西安 德拉科斯为身处困境的忠诚派们带来些许希望，但荷鲁斯叛乱编年史表明，他们并未能从战帅的无情猛攻中得到喘息之机。在那些服务于战帅的学者与档案员们（他们之后被帝皇的仆人们所俘获）所做的记录提到：有一支庞大的舰队集结在了巨口港，但它们与伊斯特万星系的距离相对较近。在人类内战爆发不久之后，战帅的部队便征服了巨口港，它现在是一台巨大战争机器的中心——后者正准备征服所有拒绝接受荷鲁斯成为自己合法主人的帝皇疆域。聚集于此的舰队属于那些忠于战帅的军团，战舰们在为即将到来的战斗而接受调整与维修，挪用了那些原本用于补给大远征庞大舰队的资源。
Here the most recent of the Warmaster's proclamations had arrived, an order to destroy the defiant Forge World of Mezoa: an order so widely promulgated to the officers of his host that several illuminated copies of the manuscript exist to this day, preserved in the Imperial Archives of Terra. Two previous attempts to invade and conquer the Loyalist outpost had been turned back by the warlike magos of Mezoa, and at the time it had been deemed more strategically efficient to simply isolate it while the surrounding systems were dominated and a secure base for Horus' inevitable onslaught on the Imperial core was established. Now, as the vast hosts of the Warmaster readied themselves for the push on Terra, all potential weaknesses in their rear areas were to be eradicated so that all assets could be devoted to the battle for those systems at the core of Imperial space.
战帅的最新公告已经抵达了此地，他命令部队去摧毁负隅顽抗的铸造世界梅左阿；该命令在其麾下的军官间被非常广泛传递，以至于仍有几份装饰华美的手稿副本留存至今，并被收录于泰拉上的帝国档案馆中。叛军之前也发动了两次入侵并征服梅左阿的尝试，但都被当地的好战贤者们击退了；彼时，叛军们认为：在周边的星域被战帅所统治，荷鲁斯向帝国核心区域发动不可阻挡进攻所需的安全基地被建立的同时，简单地孤立该世界在战略上更有效。但现在，随着战帅本人准备向泰拉挺进，其后方区域的所有潜在弱点都要被根除，这样所有的战争资源就都能被投入到帝国核心疆域星系的战斗中。
The conquest of Mezoa, however strategically important, would only be bought at a high cost in lives and materiel, and few of the commanders gathered at Port Maw were eager to so weaken their forces at such an early juncture in the war. Yet the order conveyed by the Warmaster's emissary could not be ignored, and so a quiet war erupted within the confines of Port Maw, a war fought with lies, veiled threats and no few fatal confrontations as the various officers sought to see the mission assigned to their rivals. Recently returned to Port Maw after the disastrous failure at Fortress Stranivar, and lacking either influential patrons or a united officer cadre, it eventually fell to the 114th Grand Battalion of the Iron Warriors and the 78th Chapter of the Alpha Legion to prosecute the Mezoan campaign.
征服梅左阿虽然有战略重要性，但只有付出高昂的兵力与军备损耗代价才能将之做到。在集结于巨口港的军官中，几乎无人愿意在这场战争中如此早期的关键阶段中削弱自身力量。但战帅特使传递的命令也无法被无视，于是巨口港内部爆发了一场无声的战争；这场争斗中充斥着谎言、隐晦的威胁与为数不少的致命对抗，同时各级军官都想看到这次任务被指派给竞争对手。在Stranivar要塞遭遇灾难性失败后，钢铁勇士第114大营和阿尔法军团第78战团于近期返回巨口港，而且他们缺乏有影响力的后台与团结统一的军官核心，因此发动梅左阿战役的任务最终落在了这两支部队肩上。
Autilon Skorr of the Alpha Legion, as the highest ranking officer amongst the units assigned to the campaign, was placed in overall command of it. Ambitious even in the wake of the failure at Stranivar and well aware of the enmity borne for him by most of the command elements of the 114th Grand Battalion, Consul-Delegatus Skorr used his authority as commander of the task force and its fleet to appropriate the lion's share of the available resources for his own Legion, leaving the Iron Warriors elements, commanded by Narik Dreygur, little chance to recover from the losses of the Stranivar campaign. With the bulk of the Iron Warriors and their volatile lord, Perturabo, far distant and the other Legion commanders uninterested in the plight of a failed officer, Dreygur and his men had no option but to make what repairs they could.
作为被指派到此次战役的部队中的最高级指挥官，来自阿尔法军团的奥帝龙 斯考尔负责全权指挥。哪怕是在经历过Stranivar的失败后，斯考尔这位军团代表仍然野心勃勃，而且也非常清楚第114大营的大部分指挥官都对自己抱有敌意，他利用自己作为特遣队与舰队指挥官的权力，将大部分可用资源都侵吞到了自己军团部队手中，这导致纳雷克 德雷古尔指挥下的钢铁勇士们几乎没有机会从Stranivar战役（造成）的损失中恢复过来。由于大部分钢铁勇士都与其阴晴不定的主人——佩图拉博相距遥远，其他军团的指挥官们也对一名失败军官的困境毫无兴趣，所以德雷古尔与下属们别无选择，只有尽其所能加以修整。
Composed of a dozen capital class warships, including a pair of fearsome Mangonel class bombardment cruisers, 9,000 Legiones Astartes, three full Taghmata from the Forge World of M'Pandex and 20000 auxiliary troops, the Mezoa task force was one of the largest battlegroups Horus assigned to independent command outside of his brother Primarchs listed in the chronides of the early years of the Horus Heresy. More than that, victory in this campaign would have garnered the favour of Horus for its commanding officer, a commodity that would have become invaluable had the Warmaster completed his conquest. Departing in good order the fleet entered the Warp, assured by the Davinite priests assigned to their contingent of Navigators that the passage would be swift and sure, and cleared of all storms. Within a few short days of the arrival of the Ebon Drake at Mezoa, the Traitor fleet would be in a position to begin the assault.
在荷鲁斯叛乱早期阶段的编年史中，除了他的原体兄弟之外，梅左阿特遣队是被荷鲁斯赋予过独立指挥权的最大规模战斗群之一，由十二艘主力级战舰——其中还包括两艘石弩级轰炸巡洋舰、9000名阿斯塔特军团战士、M'Pandex铸造世界的三支满编禁卫军和20000辅助军部队组成。除此之外，此次战役的胜利还会为参战部队指挥官博得荷鲁斯的青睐，倘若战帅完成了他的征服，这份恩宠将会是无价之宝。舰队井然有序地进入亚空间，从巨口港动身出发，被指派到导航者分队中的达文牧师们保证到：航路将是迅速且可靠的，而且会避开所有亚空间风暴。在乌木火龙号抵达梅左阿的短短数天之内，叛军舰队便能就位以开始进攻。
Unto the Crucible of War
身赴战火熔炉
With the recovery of Cassian Dracos, new hope awoke in those who had come to Isstvan. Once again they moved with the purpose and easy camaraderie of warrior-brothers rather than the grim brooding of previous days. Even those of the Iron Hands and Raven Guard who accompanied them, for whom Dracos could offer no words of prophecy were heartened by the thought that where one Primarch had survived so might others. Few among the company doubted the words of Cassian Dracos for even a moment, such was the awe inspired by the history of his deeds and the near-impossible means of his survival. He was installed upon the Ebon Drake with all haste, where his Vulkan-forged shell began to slowly restore his systems without outside aid, a tech-miracle that served only to bolster his growing legend.
随着卡西安 德拉科斯回归，赶往伊斯特万星系的忠诚派们心中被唤起了新的希望。他们再次起航前行，这次心中满怀着的是勇士兄弟们的意志与轻松的袍泽情谊，而非之前的阴沉思虑。即便对陪同火蜥蜴们远航的钢铁之手与暗鸦守卫们而言，尽管卡西安 德拉科斯无法为他们提供预言，但“既然有一位原体幸存下来，那么其他原体也可能还存活着”的想法也令其感到振奋。船员中几乎没人对卡西安 德拉科斯的话语感到过哪怕片刻的怀疑，这位老军团长的往昔事迹与他近乎不可能的幸存（在众人心中）所激发出的敬畏就是如此强烈。他被匆忙安置到乌木火龙号上，在没有外部帮助的情况下，沃坎为其铸造的机体缓慢缓慢修复（操作）系统，这项科技奇迹只会令其愈发传奇。
Despite his long, unsleeping entombment beneath Isstvan, Dracos refused all offers of a return to the slumber that most Dreadnoughts, especially one of his age, craved. Though clearly changed in aspect by his ordeal and often lost to extended periods of near-incoherent prognostication and memories of his centuries of battle, he quickly came to exert a palpable influence over the company of the Ebon Drake. Many of the ship's company came to him to receive wisdom and prophecy, both from amongst the Salamanders and those of their brother Legions that were present. In the few short days the Ebon Drake spent in orbit of Isstvan V after the recovery of Dracos, the Legiones Astartes aboard swiftly began to display a new form of heraldry, myriad devotional icons applied with the care of dedicated craftsmen in honour of the venerable Dreadnought, and a new title is noted in many log entries, applied to those who sat in attendance on Dracos: the Disciples of the Flames.
尽管德拉科斯被清醒地埋在伊斯特万五号地下很久，但他拒绝了所有让其重新入眠的提议，而大多数无畏机甲，尤其是他这个年龄的古战士们，都是渴望沉眠的。尽管他的面貌因经历而出现了明显改变，而且经常长时间沉湎于几乎不连贯的预言和自己数个世纪的战斗记忆中，但德拉科斯很快便对乌木火龙号上的人们产生了显著影响。很多船员都来到他面前，寻求智慧和预言，其中即有火蜥蜴，也有来自兄弟军团的战士们。当德拉科斯回归后，乌木火龙号又在伊斯特万五号的轨道上短暂逗留了几日，而在此期间，船上的阿斯塔特军团战士很快便开始展示出一套新型的纹章，专注敬业的工匠们仔细绘制出无数虔诚的圣像，用于纪念这台可敬的无畏。很多日志条目中也都记录下一个新的头衔，用于称呼那些侍坐于德拉科斯身旁的人们：烈火门徒。
It was not just the human crew who fell under the strange charisma of the twice-dead Dreadnought: the servitors and simple automata that performed many of the ship's more mundane functions became unreliable in his presence. Many of the service-automata had to be forcibly- removed from the chamber where he rested after developing anomalous routines in their neural-cortexes, while a number of high-grade servitors detached themselves from duty in the Armorium to operate as attendants to the Dreadnought, seemingly without orders. No explanation for these events is recorded in any official log retrieved from the Ebon Drake, indeed, it seems unlikely that any real attempt was made by the crew to fully investigate the phenomenon.
复死者无畏的奇怪魅力不仅令人类船员们拜服，当德拉克斯在场时，机仆和用于执行飞船上诸多简单功能的自动机械也变得不可靠。在他休息的房间中，很多服务用自动机械的神经皮层都出现了异常程序，之后船员们不得不将之强行移除；同时还有一些高级机仆离开自己在军械库中的职责，去充当无畏机甲的侍从——这一切似乎是在没有命令的情况下发生的。从乌木火龙号上收回的任何官方日志中，都未曾记录对于这些事件的解释说明，事实上，船员们似乎也不可能真去试图对这些现象进行全面调查。
Those command logs recovered in later years show that when the Ebon Drake departed Isstvan V, it was Cassian Dracos, the Dragon Revenant, who commanded her course and that of those who now followed him. With their original mission, Lord Keeper Rhy'Tan's charge to investigate Isstvan V,now complete, many of the crew's company expected a triumphant return to Nocturne, yet Dracos would not allow such a course to be plotted. Instead the inscrutable Dreadnought, still little more than a semi-coherent metal shell, insisted they set course for the Forge World of Mezoa, and few among the crew voiced objection. The Ebon Drake translated once again to the tempestuous seas of the Warp only a few short days after the retrieval of Cassian Dracos, never to return to the silent grave that the Isstvan System had become.
之后几年恢复出的指挥日志表明，当乌木火龙号从伊斯特万五号出发时，就是“复仇之龙”——卡西安 德拉科斯在指挥飞船航程与那些已经成为其信徒的船员们。现在，乌木火龙号已经完成守卫官瑞’坦阁下交付的原本任务——调查伊斯特万五号，很多船员都想要凯旋，返回夜曲星；然而德拉科斯并不想如是设定航线。这台神秘莫测的无畏机甲（但他此刻仍然不过是一台半连贯的金属机体）坚持要人们前往铸造世界梅左阿，而船员中几乎无人提出反对。在德拉科斯回归短短数天之后，乌木火龙号便再次进入了狂风暴雨笼罩下的亚空间之海，再也未曾回到已经沦为寂静墓园的伊斯特万星系。
However, the situation at Mezoa was far more grim than they had anticipated. The mighty Forge World, a glowing ember encircled by a dense ring of orbital stations and ordnance satellites, was besieged by a Traitor armada intent on stopping any craft from approaching or leaving the beleaguered Loyalist fortress. Emerging at the very outermost edges of the Mezoan System, the Ebon Drake broke from the depths of warp space into the heart of a chaotic void battle, with squadrons of heavy cruisers marked by the sigils of the Iron Warriors and Alpha Legion striving to gain local space superiority over a rag-tag fleet of craft bearing insignia ranging from marred Legion icons and Imperial navy markings, to the eternal flame symbol of Mezoa itself.
然而，梅左阿的境况远比众人的预料恶劣得多。这个强大的铸造世界是一颗发着光的余烬色星球，轨道空间站与卫星炮塔紧密围绕着它；一支叛军舰队现在围困住了梅左阿，意图阻止任何飞船靠近或离开这座被围困的忠诚派要塞。乌木火龙号是从梅左阿星系的极外侧边缘现身的，它从亚空间深处突入现实宇宙，扎进了一场混乱虚空战的战场中央。喷涂着钢铁勇士与阿尔法军团纹章的（多支）重型巡洋舰中队们发起进攻，意图在当地宙域夺取（战略）优势；与之交战的是一支破烂不堪的舰队，飞船们的标志不一而足，从被污损的军团纹章和帝国海军标记，到梅左阿自己的永恒之火图案，尽在其中。
As void craft of both sides fought and died, the titanic explosions that marked their passing lighting up the void like miniature suns and shaking the Ebon Drake with their blast-waves, the crew of the lone Salamanders cruiser strove to make sense of the jumbled web of identification signals broadcast by the combatants. Several tense seconds passed as the ship's command crew established friend and foe, a period of time that left them vulnerable to any number of deadly strikes. It was only the confusion sowed amongst the enemy by the Ebon Drake's sudden arrival that forestalled their immediate destruction. With the enemy marked, the Ebon Drake let loose its weapons batteries, manoeuvring to join the Loyalist fleet that stood sentinel over Mezoa, a fleet that was at a serious numerical disadvantage to their foe.
随着双方舰船激烈厮杀并被摧毁，标志其消亡的巨大爆炸火团如微缩恒星般点亮虚空，释放出的冲击波令乌木火龙号颤抖摇晃。在那艘孤零零的火蜥蜴巡洋舰上，船员们奋力搞清楚参战者们播放出的杂乱身份识别信号。紧张的数秒之后，飞船的指挥官分清了敌人与盟友。在这段时间中，乌木火龙号原本容易遭受任意数量的致命进攻，只是由于它的突然抵达在敌人中所造成了困惑，才让这艘飞船未被立刻摧毁。随着敌人被标记，乌木火龙号的武器炮塔们火力全开，（同时）采取机动，加入到守卫着梅左阿的忠诚派舰队中——相比于敌人，这支舰队处于严重的数量劣势。
The battle above Mezoa continued to rage for nine long hours, both sides locked in bloody stalemate as the Traitor admirals spent the lives of their ships to grind down their opponents. Hampered by the fractured nature of their fleet, with the various detachments of craft answering only to their own lords and no other, the Loyalists were eventually forced to abandon orbital space around Mezoa, pulling back to the outer planets to regroup. Some few ships amongst the fleet, including the Ebon Drake, risked crippling fire to close with Mezoa one last time and release flights of dropcraft, and of the half dozen Legion and navy craft to attempt the manoeuvre, only three rose once again from the Forge World. With the retreat of the Loyalist armada, there was no force left to stop the wallowing troop barges and heavy cruisers of Horus' host as they took up station over Mezoa and began to sweep its skies clear of defence platforms and killsats. The final invasion of Mezoa had begun.
梅左阿上空的战火持续肆虐了九个小时，由于叛军的海军将领们依靠牺牲己方舰船来碾碎对手，双方陷入了血腥僵局。受自身舰队碎片化性质的妨碍，忠诚派麾下各种不同的舰艇分队仅听命于自己的领主，他们最终被迫放弃了梅左阿周围的宙域，撤往外环行星以进行重整。在舰队中，只有极少数的飞船冒着足以重伤自己的炮火，在最后时刻接近了梅左阿并释放出空降艇，其中就包括乌木火龙号。在尝试进行机动的那六艘军团与海军舰艇中，再次从铸造世界中升起的仅有三艘。随着忠诚派舰队撤退，当荷鲁斯军队的部队运输船和重型巡洋舰在梅左阿上空就位，并开始扫清空中的防御平台和杀戮设施时，已经没有部队能来阻止他们了。对于梅左阿的最终入侵已经开始了。
