HH3节译：法尔海战（1）
The Battle of Phall is but one battle in an age of massacres and betrayals. The flame of its remembrance flutters weakly beside the flames of so many other greater acts of treachery which signposted the death of unity. What is Phall to the scale of losses at Calth or the titanic conflict at Isstvan? All of these and many others were plans hatched by Horus to corrupt, cripple and destroy those who might oppose him in a war he intended to burn bright and secure him swift victory before the Full might of his foe could be roused to wakeful wrath against him. Many of these plots and ambuscades succeeded, others failed, but all were intended to strike home before the Imperium realised it was in a fight for its very survival.
法尔海战发生于背叛和大屠杀时期，不过相比于其他许多标志着人类统一之死的更为恶劣的背叛行径，它并不显眼。毕竟与考斯的损失规模与伊斯特万星系中的惨烈战争相比，法尔海战又算的了什么呢？所有这些和其他诸多事件都是荷鲁斯暗中谋划的方案，目的是要在帝国被激怒，拿出全部实力对抗他之前，腐化、削弱和摧毁那些可能会在他意图焚灭光明并确保自己快速取胜的战争中与之对抗的势力。这些阴谋和埋伏有很多都得逞了，其他的则失败了，但这一切的意图都是相同的，那就是要在帝国意识到自己正身处于生死存亡之战前直捣黄龙。
In this wider context, Phall was just one more bloody pearl strung around the Imperium's neck at the moment of its betrayal. With hindsight, however, can the true significance of Phall be seen. There are many reasons why this is so. Pragmatically it would have a crucial effect on warriors and warships, bleeding two mighty battle fleets of the Legiones Astartes of much of their strength at a time when either force left intact might have tipped the balance in favour of either side, and its attrition can be said to have perhaps been one coin that bought the ultimate outcome of a war that would last for years, rather than for months. It was also a moment of supreme heroism, a stark shadow thrown by the light of loyalty into the shadow of deception. It was a disaster, a lost opportunity killed by that greatest and most timeless murderer：chance. Perhaps then it is for that cruellest of reasons that Phall is remembered as a byword for sacrifice and a scar on the soul of the Imperium still.
从更广阔的背景来看，法尔海战不过是帝国遭到背叛时从脖子上淌下的血珠之一，但我们在事后就能看到法尔海战的真实意义。这场战役的状况是由很多因素造成的。从实用主义的角度来看，它对战士和战舰产生了关键性的影响。这场战斗使两支强大的阿斯塔特军团战斗舰队受创，倘若当时有任何一方完好无损，其大部分力量可能就会使战争的天平倾向于某一方。可以说，这两只舰队的损失可能导致了一个最终结果：荷鲁斯叛乱的战争持续了数年而非仅仅数个月。但这也是一个极为英雄主义的时刻，忠诚之光射入欺诈的黑暗，留下一片光亮的影子。法尔海战是一场灾难，帝国丧失了自己的机会，而对其进行扼杀的就是那个最伟大也最永恒的谋杀者：可能性。大概正是出于最残酷的原因，法尔才被人们铭记为牺牲的代名词和帝国灵魂上的一道伤疤。
Rogal Dorn was the first Primarch to learn of the treachery of his brother. Travelling back to Terra with the bulk of his forces, his fleet was caught by an upwelling of warp storms. Fleeing from the atrocity enacted upon Isstvan III, the Eisenstein was caught in the same storms, and somehow the paths of the Praetorian of Terra and the fleeing Loyalists crossed. None of those present ever spoke of the moment that Dorn learned of Horus betrayal. Of his anger we can only guess, but his response was clear. He divided his fleet, part to remain with him to defend Terra, part to strike vengefully at Horus. Almost a third of the Legions strength in warriors and warships were sent under the command of Fleet Master Yonnad to this end, reinforced with auxiliaries and additional hunter-killer squadrons from the Sol systems Astra Militaris and the Saturnyne fleet reserve. Over five hundred ships dove back into the storms under this order of battle, and set course for the Isstvan system. It was a Retribution fleet, designed to be a manifestation of justice bearing a brother's rage.
罗格 多恩是第一位得知他的兄弟发动叛乱的原体。他率领大部分部队返回泰拉，但军团舰队遭遇了一股上升的亚空间风暴，而从发生于伊斯特万三号上的暴行中逃出生天的爱森斯坦号也遭遇了相同的亚空间风暴。不知何故，泰拉禁卫官和逃亡的忠诚者们的路线交叉了。当时在场的人都未曾提过多恩得知荷鲁斯背叛帝国那一刻的表现。我们只能猜测多恩是何等的愤怒，但他的回应很明确：他把舰队一分为二，一部分跟随他去防守泰拉，另一部分去对荷鲁斯进行报复性进攻。所以，军团中大约三分之一的战士和战舰兵力被调配给舰队之主约纳德进行指挥，而且他们还得到了太阳系星界民兵和土星预备舰队所提供的辅助军和猎杀中队的增援。在这条战斗命令下，超过五百艘战舰掉头返回亚空间风暴中，启程前往伊斯特万星系。这就是报应舰队，旨在体现承担着一位兄弟的怒火的正义。
The Retribution fleet would never arrive at Isstvan. Soon after its departure, it was engulfed by the tortured Empyrean, which seemed to the astropathic auguries of Terra to convulse around the fleet and swallow it whole. Its fate was a tortured one, shorn and driven. It was torn apart by the warp storms, and its broken wreckage and surviving ships given little option for survival save to fleeing to a single calm shore, as if they were some crew of unfortunate souls swept along by a deadly cataract after a shipwreck in the tales of the ancient age of sail. That sole refiige proved to be the Phall system. Of the ships and warriors sent by Dorn, barely two-thirds survived the passage through the warp storms, with the larger Legiones Astartes vessels perhaps unsurprisingly fairing the better, but of these many were still damaged and suffered casualties. Those warships that did survive found themselves cut off from the Empyrean, becalmed in an island of cold silence. With the Warp surrounding them, ringed by the churning fury of the unabated storms, they could not make passage out of the Phall system without certain calamity, and their surviving Astropaths could neither receive nor send messages through the storm's barrier, which did no more than reflect their own messages back at them, twisted as if in mockery. Worse still was the fact that Yonnad, one of Dorns most trusted commanders —a strategist and leader whose record was almost without peer among his Legion— had died in the storms.
但报应舰队永远也不会抵达伊斯特万星系。在出发后不久，他们便被饱受折磨的至高天所吞没。在泰拉的星语占卜师们看来，亚空间在舰队周边抽搐痉挛，将他们整个吞噬。舰队的命运倍受非物质宇宙的折磨，他们历尽波折，随波漂流。亚空间风暴令舰队四分五裂，除了逃到一个平静的海岸外，破碎的残骸与幸存的舰船几乎没有（其他的）生存选择，他们就像是古代航海故事中那些在遭遇了一场海难后又被致命的大瀑布所卷走不幸灵魂。在多恩派出的舰船和战士中，仅仅有三分之二的兵力从穿越亚空间风暴的航程中幸存下来，阿斯塔特军团的大型战舰或许状况会更好一些，但其中依旧有很多都出现了舰体损坏和人员损失。这些幸存下来的战舰发现自己与至高天隔绝开来，他们停航在了一片冷寂的孤岛上。他们周边的亚空间被风暴未减弱的翻腾狂怒所环绕着，这种特定灾难使舰队无法离开法尔星系，而且幸存的星语者们也无法穿透风暴的阻碍来接收或发送信息，他们自己发送的信息又被反映给他们，扭曲程度就像在嘲弄他们一样。雪上加霜的是：约纳德，这位多恩最信任的指挥官之一，功勋记录在军团中几乎无可匹敌的战略家和领导者，已经死在了亚空间风暴中。
The Mantle of Command
指挥衣钵
The Imperial Fists are a Legion bound by discipline and unbending respect for oaths of honour. Yonnad was dead but in life he had anointed his lieutenant and pupil with responsibility for his command should he fall in battle. Alexis Polux was a captain of his Legion of relatively recent ascension to command rank; born of Inwit and marked for his great stature and stone-like demeanour, but one whose fame was not such that many beyond the ranks of Dorns sons had come to know of him. Cold, calculating and direct, his decades of war had marked him to some as a worthy warrior, but within the ranks of the fleet, there were Imperial Fists whose fame and experience yet exceeded Poluxs own, captains such as Tyr, Pertinax and Scallus with tallies of victory to their name that far exceeded those of the younger Polux. But Fleet Master Yonnad had seen more in the man he had chosen, and is said to have expressed to Rogal Dorn himself that Polux had the spark of genius in his understanding of warfare, a spark which had yet to kindle fully to the flame of its potential. We cannot now know what might have become of Polux had the command of the Retribution fleet not fallen to him, but as the proverb of the ancients was to have it "Commeth the Hour; Commeth the Man". This was to prove true in the case of Alexis Polux, and we can see now that Poluxs command altered the future of his entire Legion.
帝国之拳是一个由纪律和对荣誉誓言的执着尊重绑定起来的军团。尽管约纳德已经战死，但他在生前便指定他的学徒和副官——亚历克西斯 波拉克斯在自己牺牲后负责指挥部队。波拉克斯是军团中的一位连长，他晋升到指挥阶层的时间相对较短；他生于因维特，以高大的身材和磐石般的举止而著称，但他的名声并不显赫，以至于除了多恩的子嗣之外，很少有人知道他。波拉克斯冷酷、精明而且直率，数十年的战争经历将他塑造为了一名优秀的战士，但在舰队中也有名声和经历超过波拉克斯的军官，比如泰尔、博帝纳克斯和萨鲁斯等诸位连长，他们每个人的取胜次数都远超年轻的波拉克斯。但舰队之主约纳德在自己选中的学徒身上看到了更多的特质，据说他曾向罗格 多恩表示：波拉克斯在理解战争方面有着某种天赋火花，这丝火花尚未完全点燃其潜力的火焰。倘若当时指挥报应舰队的责任并未落在波拉克斯肩上，那么他会变成怎样一个人物，我们现在不得而知，但就如同古老的谚语所言：英雄造时势，时势造英雄。这句话在亚历克西斯 波拉克斯身上应验了，而且从现在来看，波拉克斯的指挥确实改变了整个帝拳军团的未来。
Accepting mastery of the Retribution fleet, Polux's first act was to put it into a state of preparedness for attack. Reserves and supplies intended to sustain a long campaign were immediately expended to bring the surviving warships into a state of full repair and battle readiness without equivocation —a colossal feat of organisation in which Polux himself was to take the principal hand in organising. His warships he arranged into a constantly shifting sphere at the systems edge; the fleet became a fortress in the void, vigilant and constantly ready to respond to attack, and also positioned ready to cross into the Warp if a passage through the storms should clear. For days extending into months the Imperial Fists maintained their readiness, charting every gravitational tide and celestial synchronicity of the planetary system, making it a potential battlefield known to them in every detail.
接管报应舰队后，波拉克斯的第一项举措就是命令全体进入进攻防备状态。原本用于维持长期战役的储备资源和补给被立即消耗，以使幸存的战舰毫不含糊地进入全面修复和备战状态——这项壮举需要庞杂的组织规划安排，而波拉克斯本人将在组织工作中发挥主要作用。他在恒星系边缘将战舰们排列成一个不断变化的球体，舰队成为了虚空中的一座要塞，他们保持警惕，并随时准备对进攻做出回应；而且他们也各就各位，准备在穿越风暴的航线清晰显现后进入亚空间。舰队停留在此地的时间由数天延长为数月，帝国之拳军团依然保持着战备状态，他们绘制行星系统中的所有引力潮汐点和天体同步轨道，让自己知道这片潜在战场中的所有细节。
The Imperial Fists drilled tirelessly in every aspect of readiness from personal combat to coordination of fire between every part of the fleet, practicing manoeuvre and stratagems against every eventuality with a thoroughness that might have shamed even a commander of the XIIIth Legion. Though repeated attempts were made to break through the storms, they all failed.
从个人战斗到舰队各个部分之间的开火配合，帝国之拳们孜孜不倦地钻研着战备的各个方面，他们以一种甚至可能让第十三军团的指挥官都感到自愧不如的彻底性来练习应对各种可能性的机动动作和策略。舰队也屡次尝试冲破风暴，但都失败了。
Polux's decision to put his command into such an active defensive condition, over say, conservation of strength on one hand or attempting to brave the storms regardless as soon as he was able on another—given the dire orders which they had been given and were sworn to obey— might seem strangely prescient, but such an assessment misses a number of factors both concerning the Retribution fleet's situation and the nature of the Imperial Fists themselves. When faced with uncertainty, defence is the VIIth Legions natural response nor is inaction part of their nature. Rogal Dorn is quoted repeatedly as saying that "if one waits for an enemy to declare their intent to attack then a gift is made to them of victory before battle has begun'. Poluxs caution was also not without cause. The Phall system, though obscure, was noted in the records of the Great Crusade as being home to two inhabited planets. Phall I and II were both agri-worlds, one covered in oceans, the other with fungal forests. Their populations, although not great in number by the standards of many worlds, were nevertheless well-established, peaceful and recorded to be in steady communication with the wider Imperium， to whom they supplied regular provender.
波拉克斯决定将他的指挥置于非常积极的防御状态，他一方面保持力量，另一方面又试图在他有能力的情况下立即勇敢地穿越风暴，考虑到他们已经被下达并宣誓服从的可怕命令，波拉克斯的举措可能看起来奇怪地有先见之明。但这种看法也是忽略了许多关于报应舰队的状况和帝国之拳自身天性的要素，在面对不确定性时，第七军团的自然反应就是进行防御，无所作为不是他们的天性。罗格 多恩的一句名言被他们反复引用过：“如果能等到敌方先声夺人，那我们在战前就已经取胜。”波拉克斯的谨慎也不无道理。尽管鲜为人知，但根据大远征时期的记录，法尔星系中也有两颗有人类居住行星——法尔I和法尔II，他们都是农业世界，一颗遍布海洋，另一颗覆盖着真菌森林。虽然相比于很多帝国世界的标准，它们的人口数量并不众多，但这两个世界也是稳固平和之地。它们被记录与人类帝国之间存在着稳定的联系，定期为后者提供粮食。
When the Retribution fleet arrived at Phall, both worlds were found to be bare of human life, with no cause of this sudden calamity evident, nor even remains of the dead to be found. This, of course, was immediately cause for alarm and deep suspicion, and served only to further provoke caution on the part of the Imperial Fists on their unexpected arrival. In retrospect, it can be clearly seen as yet more evidence that suggests now that Phall was no random place of battle, but a place prepared or perhaps predestined by the dark powers beyond as both a trap and a place of ambush; a killing ground intended to doom a Legion. That such a thing —the manipulation of the Warp to so drive a fleet from its course, to shipwreck and bedevil it, and bring it exhausted to a single mote of cosmic space and there deposit it——was previously utterly inconceivable as reality, does not make it any less so. It was also likely true that the activity of mounting continuous defensive manoeuvre and relentless drill served a secondary purpose; it channelled the inherent restless aggression and intemperate bile that had been raised in the hearts of the Imperial Fists since the unbelievable facts of Horus' betrayal had come to light. To the Imperial Fists, honour was above all else, and the Traitors by their very existence were now a slight to that honour that could only be expunged by blood. The chance for the Legion to do so would come from an unexpected quarter, and far more shockingly and suddenly than any realised.
但当报应舰队抵达法尔星系时，他们并未在两个农业世界上发现活着的人类，这场突如其来的灾难没有明显的原因，甚至连死者的遗骸都找不到。当然，这立即引起了舰队的警觉和深切怀疑，也只会让帝国之拳对自己意外到达此地更为警惕。我们从事后可以看到更多证据证明法尔星系并非一片随机的战场，而是一个由外界的黑暗力量准备或预定好的地方，这里既是陷阱又是伏击区，是一片意图摧毁帝拳军团的杀戮地。操纵亚空间（活动）使舰队偏离航向，令其沉没并陷入困境，最后还要将这支精疲力尽的舰队带往宇宙空间中的一个角落，并把他们困在此地——这种事情在以前是完全不可想象的现实，但这并不会减弱这一切已经发生的事实。不过真相也可能是：进行连续防御机动和无情演习的活动是帝拳军团的次要目标；自从得知荷鲁斯发动叛乱这一令人难以置信的事实后，帝国之拳军团战士们心中便升起了固有的不安分侵略性和无节制的愤怒。帝国之拳军团认为荣誉高于一切，如今对那只能用鲜血抹去的荣誉而言，叛徒们的存在就是一种奇耻大辱。帝拳军团将会从一个意想不到的地方得到捍卫荣誉的机会，而且比任何人意识到的都要令人震惊和突然。
Death Scream
死亡之嚎
Polux's caution was eventually vindicated when the Retribution fleet came under unexpected and deadly psychic assault. Visions of pain and ethereal screams ripped through the warships with tortuous effect. At the time it seemed to the Imperial Fists as though this event was an attack in itself, but later discoveries and the perspective of history tells us that this was not the case, but the Empyreal scream served a different purpose. Scattered through the Phall system in places of concealment were hundreds of machines, each containing a comatose Astropath. Mutilated and bonded to psy-amplifying devices of unknown origin, each psyker was woken to full horrific wakefulness when the machine was triggered. The Astropaths' overloaded minds swept the void, scouring it for information before they perished and their death screams cut through the warp storms, as both beacon and message. Who had prepared the strange booby-trap and who received the messages sent by the murdered psykers was not known to the Imperial Fists, but one thing was put beyond doubt as the devices were analysed; someone was coming for them.
当报应舰队遭到一次意想不到且致命的灵能攻击时，波拉克斯的谨慎最终被证明是正确的。痛苦的幻象和来自以太界的非自然的嚎叫声以扭曲的效果突然在战舰猛得传播开来。当时在帝拳军团看来，这件事本身就是一次袭击，但之后的调查探索和历史观点告诉我们：事实并非如此，但这次至高天尖啸另有用途。舰队（后来）发现法尔星系的隐蔽处散落着数百台机器，每台都关押着一名昏迷的星语者。当机器被触发时，每个灵能者都会遭到肢解并被绑定到不明来源的灵能放大装置，他们被唤醒到极其可怕的清醒状态。星语者们超负荷的意识会扫过虚空，在这些灵能者死亡之前搜寻信息，之后他们的死亡尖叫划破亚空间风暴，这声灵能嚎叫既是灯塔又是信息。帝拳军团并不知晓是谁准备了这个拙劣的陷阱并接收到了被谋杀的灵能者们传递的信息，但对于这些装置的分析让他们得出了一个毋庸置疑的结论：某些人正在为了他们而来。
In truth it now seems likely that Phall was a trap long prepared. The scouring of the system of life, the seeding of the machinebound psykers, even the clearing of the warp storms to allow the Retribution fleet into the system, all point to their marooning having been at the least planned for. So it was, to quote the writings of the Navis- Archonite Lyssian Haldaine, whose treatise on the Empyreal disturbances of the Horus Heresy era and their occult relationship to the Traitors cause has since become judged as the greatest authority on these matters: "...the Imperial Fists waited, and prepared for a battle they did not know would come, while all around them the Warp laughed, and the playing pieces of catastrophe were moved into place to seal their ending."
事实上，现在看来法尔很可能是一个早就准备好的陷阱。对于星系中生命的肃清，对于机械束缚灵能者的事先隐秘安置，外加清除亚空间风暴以允许报应舰队进入法尔星系，这一切都表明他们陷入困境至少是被计划好的。我们在此处引用要导航尊者莉西亚·霍尔丹作品中的内容，霍尔丹尊者写作了关于荷鲁斯叛乱时代的亚空间中骚乱现象及其与叛徒行动间神秘关系的论文，这些著作从此被认为是解释此类问题的最权威的资料。引用内容如下：
“…帝国之拳们等待着，准备迎接一场自己并不知道会即将到来的战斗做。而他们周边的亚空间则发出阵阵嘲笑，至高天将一枚灾难的棋子移动到了合适的位置，来结束这盘游戏。”
