【战锤40k同人作品翻译】Ennui 第二章：信仰 Faith
本章概述：
一位战斗修女被要么是帝皇的意志，要么是别的更糟的东西救了下来。
In which a Sister of Battle is saved by either the Will of the Emperor, or something far, far worse.
正文：
空。
在将爆弹枪磁锁到腰间前，我瞪着显示器上闪烁的符文狠狠地咒骂出声。没有弹药的话这件武器只不过是一根受祝的大头短棒，不过我不会如此轻易地把我的姐妹的神圣武器扔到一边，在我的敌人有可能腐化它的机魂使之为己所用时不能这么做。
除此之外，我尚且有可能找到一处弹药补给点，即便它只是从一名安菲特里亚（Amphitria）的守军的尸体上拿来的半空弹匣。
况且，这里有好多的尸体。
我低姿穿过这条小巷，耳朵对着东南方向上的枪声和来自这个世界的掠夺者的混乱的嘲笑声和呼喊声。确实，它们近到可以听见，但它们明显正在交战中，尽管没法辨认在是跟帝国卫军战斗还是为了赃物在跟自己人打架。
对于兽人来说，两者机会相等。
普瑞莱克斯五号（Praelex V）上最大的巢都安菲特里亚的死亡气息是我在过去接近10个标准日中唯一能闻到的东西——由于更短的昼夜循环所以以这个星球上的标准是14天。我至少在过去两个昼夜里没有合眼，我一直在躲藏逃窜，自从…
我闭上眼睛，将回忆中的尖叫声驱赶出去。
其中一些人可能还活着，但我没有指望这个。绿色的入侵者们不以仁慈闻名，如果任何一名姐妹活了下来都极不可能是件好事。
不，她们就算以帝皇之名战死，被埋葬着绿皮尸潮下，也好过活着被野蛮的异形杂种奴役。
溜进一条小巷，又进入一个被暴力的炮火摧毁的预制房屋住宅区，我得以清点自己的补给。
少量的食物，如果我小心处置的话能撑上几天，而且我的动力甲能回收水，所以我或许能在过滤器坏掉前维持多于一个星期的时间。
一把没有爆弹的爆弹枪，一个我从安菲特里安第五龙骑兵团的帝国卫军那里拿到的充了一半电的激光手枪。我没有额外的充电包，拿着一把有缺口的战斗刀，穿着一件破损的动力甲就进入了战场。
我的左臂无力地垂着，不过并不是因为伤势。我的护甲中高贵的机魂已因在一阵可能致命的冲击中保护了我而严重受损。显然这场冲击本会切下我的胳膊，但这件护甲已经完全扛下了这一击，我的手臂因而只受了瘀伤。
然而，这件护甲的情况要远远更糟，且因没有一名欧姆弥赛亚的神甫来主次修复仪式，我实际上已经与残废无异。
我发现了一扇通往一处居所的半开的门并用肩膀一路挤了进去，对着废墟做了个鬼脸。感谢帝皇，这里没有尸体，且兽人明显还没到过这，不过这种情况不会维持下去。
我重重地坐到了地上并用体重把卡住的门带回原位。这花了些时间，并发出了我不想要的噪音，但它最终还是嵌了进去，我在休息片刻时如释重负地发出了无声的叹息。
我身上很疼，我的注意力在流逝，而我几乎无法在除了喘下一口气外的事情上集中精神。
我没有绝望下去，而是转到跪姿，放下爆弹枪，拿出我护甲的小型储物层里的一小套清洁工具。我一边拆卸着武器一遍低声念着战争祷言，一边赞颂帝皇的奉献一边小心地用圣油擦拭每一个零件。祂自然本不会把我的姐妹和我送来绝望地送死，我知道…我在此的存在和我挚爱的姐妹的死亡有着更重大的意义。
一定有的。
“帝皇庇佑，”我在将撞针复位并插回空弹匣时喃喃道。“帝皇…庇佑。”
感到更放心了些后，我站起来检视这个小小的住处。这里很朴素，与一名帝国的卑微仆人相配，适合一个谦卑的灵魂。以我的假设，这里的设施都已停摆，但我还是设法找到了些我存放的口粮条和一小瓶清水。
我盯着这瓶水，在存下它，喝光它，和拿它擦去身上的些许污垢间纠结。
我将为帝皇和帝国奋战至死，但，呃，我倒不会为变得更干净些就用掉这些水，哪怕就用一点点。
好吧，普莉希拉大修女再也不会在身旁责怪我浪费补给了，她在我们着陆后不久就被其中一头巨兽斩首，于是我从一边的柜子上拿起一张看上去相对干净的衣物残片，仰起头来往脸上滴了一点水。
清凉、提神的水溅在我的脸上，带来了一种解脱感，我甩了甩那块落灰的布，随后小心地擦拭脸颊、鼻子和额头。
这布几乎成了黑的，在把它丢到一边前我看向了一面破碎的镜子，它历经破坏后依旧有些残片顽固地附在上面。
见习战斗修女亚历桑德拉·阿图斯（Alessandra Artus）回望着我，以这个词的某些定义来看。我看上去既憔悴又疲惫，我平时呈现暗淡的橄榄色的皮肤现在因营养不良和缺乏日照而变得苍白。
我和我的其他姐妹们同样苍白的头发湿漉漉地粘在我的脸上，我从自己的容貌上移开视线。
我知道，这就是战争，这些事情并非意料之外，可我长久以来都习惯于尽量保持整洁，而现在离我还是个新人的时候并没有多久。亏我这倒霉的运气，这场灭绝战应该是我获得战斗修女的职衔后的初试，尽管我觉得自己还是比我的小队的其他人稍幸运点的。
我再次无声地向帝皇祈愿：如果她们还活着的话能够免于绿皮之手，抑或是已经光荣地战死，甚至已经屹立于祂的身侧。
“WAAAGH！”
一声响亮的兽性嘶吼划破空气，我条件反射地下蹲、抽出激光手枪，并深切地想念起我破碎的链锯剑。即便是普通的兽人也是血肉和毁灭的引擎，我也曾亲眼目睹它们有多难杀。
我曾目睹一个被爆弹的持续射击轰成两截的兽人拽倒并掐死了奥莉莎姐妹。
高阶修女卡莉昂射断了其中一个的胳膊，又用链锯剑捅穿了它，结果它用剩下的一只手抓住了她的头颅并将之像熟透的瓜果一样碾碎。
用一把充了一半电的激光手枪去试图放倒一头兽人，这个念头几近可笑。
那个无能的卫兵本可以完整地留下他的激光卡宾枪。
我仔细地倾听着，兽人几乎不可能做到隐蔽行事，我能听到它们在住所走廊的远端破门而入，撕开房间。
我看不到它们是否冲我而来，但这声音表明它们确实在这么做。我考虑过撤退，但我根本不可能在不惊动它们的情况下打开房门，如果我试图用跑的，它们能轻易地瞄准我的后背。
即便是兽人也不会射失一个在直线走廊上奔跑的穿动力甲的目标。
事已至此。
它们到达我藏匿的处所门前时，我已然是个死人。我死时只会带着一把刀子，而我可能做到的无非是给那个杀死我的兽人添一道伤疤，以作它日后一边在护甲上挂着我的颅骨一边对着自己的残暴同类吹嘘的资本。
“地球之主呵，垂听我祷，”我诅咒着我祈祷时颤抖的四肢，“赐我力量以尊行您的旨意。除我恐惧，以您的不屈意志充盈之；除我软弱，以您的无上伟力引领之；除我疑虑，以致畏怯无从蛊惑之。”
这些话语在兽人逼近的同时从我口中倾泻而下，它们兴奋的嚎叫在我耳边恐怖地作响。
“帝皇呵，执引我的手，”我继续念着，声线随着咸泪滑过嘴唇而颤抖，我试图将之想象成恐惧正离我而去，“仇恨为剑，以吾之憎恶洞悉异形之不可理喻，”我更紧地握住战斗刀，“蔑视为盾，以吾须穿行于烈焰赐怪形予横死；信仰为甲，因承蒙帝皇庇佑。“我预备着用战斗刀捅穿第一个进门的绿皮的眼睛。如果它个子太高，我或许也能将刀片猛击进它凸出的下颚来刺伤其大脑。
当然，我并不知道脑损伤是否足够让一个兽人停止活动。
出于某种原因我怀疑这一点。
“帝皇庇佑，”我颤抖着重复道，“帝皇庇佑，帝皇庇佑，帝皇…”
毫无预兆地，一声兽性的狂吼“WAAAAGH”划开空气，我认出来这个语调，这是兽人的战吼，只震耳欲聋地回响了片刻，随即整个住所都被某种类似皮革撕裂的可怖巨响和一种像是工业高压清洗机洗刷石墙的噪音充盈。
这种揪心的噪声只持续了几个心跳。
然后便是一片寂静。
我等着，听着，最后鼓起勇气将一只耳朵贴到门上，并屏住呼吸试图捕捉一些声响。
什么都没有，除了模糊的，“嘀嗒，嘀嗒，嘀嗒”的液体滴落声。
我用力地咽了口唾沫，战斗刀的皮革刀柄随着我将之愈发攥紧而嘎吱作响。我站起身来，坚定地用肩膀推开房门。
一小股血潮涌进了房间并没过了我的脚踝，随之是兽人的肚肠、鲜血和黏液的恶臭。我的肚子在这股难以言喻的气味如雷锤般击中我的脸时发起了抗议，我踉跄着后退了几步，随后便呕出了胃里仅存的一点内容物。
我摇晃着站起来，深呼吸了一下，然后…
这是个错误。
我跌撞着重回房间，并因臭气和污物紧紧附在鼻腔和舌面上而一次次地剧烈干呕。我的内脏痛苦地收缩、痉挛，疼痛的泪水滑落我的脸颊。
又过了一会儿，我找回了对自己的控制。我羞愧难当，没有其他人在场是我唯一的慰藉。
这一次我浅浅地呼吸，尽可能少地感知到兽人的残骸的同时完全进入了走廊。
那里已经没有能被称为兽人的东西了，只有迥然不同的…碎片。破碎的肢体洒满了整条走廊的过道。就像是一阵剥皮抽脂的狂风刮过了门厅，将异种们撕成小到没法用来估算之前有多少绿皮的碎渣。
任何兽人身上都没有哪怕一个稍微完整的部位，走廊成了一条冰冷的尸块凝成的小溪。
我慢慢转身沿着走廊看去，转向兽人进来的路，以及我假定的那个制造了这一切的东西过来的路。
我的心脏几乎僵在了胸腔里。
这条走廊…太美了。
兽人喷溅的动脉血以完美的猩红色弧线画出了一副以走廊本身为画布的三维杰作。我谨慎而缓慢地后退着，以求将这被难以形容的暴力清晰又超乎常理地刻印在墙上的画像连接起来。
“神皇啊…”
在我注视着这自不洁之物身上撕下，描绘着由在我看来正放纵地向着敌人冲去的天使般的人物们挥舞出的刀刃飓风的美景时，新一轮的泪水自我脸颊上流下。
“帝皇庇佑，”我跪在死绿皮造就的缓慢流动的小河中喃喃道，“千真万确，是帝皇庇佑。”
原文：
Empty.
I cursed viciously as I glared down at the blinking rune on the display before maglocking the bolter to my hip. Without ammo the weapon was little more than a blessed bludgeon, but I would not so easily cast aside the sacred armaments of my sisterhood, not when my foe could pervert its machine spirit to serve them.
Besides, I might yet find a cache of ammunition, even if it was no more than a half-empty magazine taken from the body of one of Amphitria’s defenders.
And there were so many bodies.
I ducked through the alleys, my ears trained to the sound of gunfire and chaotic hooting and whooping of the world’s despoilers to the southeast. They were near enough to hear, true, but they were clearly engaged in combat, although whether that was with Imperial defenders or with themselves over loot it was impossible to tell.
With Orks, it was even odds.
The charnel stink of Amphitria, Praelex V’s largest hive city, was the only thing I’d been able to smell for close to ten standard days, fourteen by this own world’s reckoning thanks to shorter day and night cycles. I hadn’t slept in the past two cycles at least, I’d been on the run or in hiding since…
I closed my eyes as I shut out the screams in my memories.
Some of them might still live, but I did not count on it. The green invader was not known for its mercy, and if any of my sisters did live then it was deeply unlikely to be a good thing.
No, better that they died in the Emperor’s name, buried under a tide of Greenskin corpses, than to live in servitude to the bestial xenobreed.
Slipping into an alley, then into a prefab hab complex that had been cracked open by crude artillery fire, I took stock of my supplies.
A small amount of food, which would last a few days if I were careful, and my power armor recycled water so I could sustain that for better than a week before the filters spoiled.
A bolter with no bolt rounds, a half-charged laspistol I’d taken from an Imperial guard of the Fifth Amphitrian Dragoons I’d entered battle alongside with no extra charge packs, a chipped combat knife, and damaged power armor.
My left arm hung limp, though not from injury. The noble machine spirit within my armor had been gravely wounded protecting me from what might have been a mortal blow. Certainly the blow would have severed my arm, but the armor had taken the strike so totally that my arm had been left little more than bruised.
The armor, however, was far worse off and without a priest of the Omnissiah to work the rites of repair over it I was left effectively crippled.
I spied a half-open door to a hab and shouldered my way in, grimacing at the ruin. There were no bodies, thank the Emperor, and the Orks clearly hadn’t gotten in here yet, but that wasn’t likely to remain the case.
Slumping to the ground, I levered the jammed door back into place with my weight. It took a moment, and there was more noise than I liked, but it eventually lodged and I sighed quietly in relief as I rested for a moment.
My body ached, my mind was slipping, and there was very little I could focus on beyond my next breath.
Rather than despair, I shifted until I was on my knees, laid out the bolter, and took the small kit of cleaning tools stowed in the small storage apparatus of my armor. I repeated the Litany of War as I dismantled the weapon, taking care to wipe each piece with sacred oils as I murmured my prayer to the Emperor for deliverance. Surely he would not have sent my sisters and I here to die a hopeless death, I knew… there was a greater purpose to my presence here, and to the deaths of my beloved sisters.
There had to be.
“The Emperor protects,” I muttered quietly as I clicked the firing pin into place and racked the empty feed. “The Emperor… protects.”
Feeling more assured, I stood and began examining the small hab. It was modest, as befitted a lowly servant of the Imperium, and suited to a humble soul. Per my assumption, none of the utilities work, but I managed to find a few ration bars, which I stowed, and a small bottle of clean water.
I stared at it, torn between saving it, drinking it, and using it to wipe some of the grime from myself.
I would fight and die for Emperor and Imperium but oh, what I wouldn’t give to be clean again, even just a little.
Well, Canoness Priscilla wasn’t around to admonish me for wasting supplies anymore, she’d had her head sheared off by one of the enormous brutes shortly after we landed, so I grabbed one of the cleaner-looking scraps of cloth on the counter, lifted my head, tilted my face up, and dribbled some of the water over my face.
The cool, refreshing splash hit me like a wave of relief, and I shook the dusty cloth out a few times before wiping carefully along my cheeks, nose, and brow.
The cloth came away nearly black, and I tossed it away before turning to look into a shattered mirror which still had a few stubborn fragments clinging to it after the devastation.
Battle-Sister Novitiate Alessandra Artus stared back at me, for certain definitions of the word. I looked haggard and weary, which I was, and my skin, normally a dusky shade of olive, was blanched from malnutrition and lack of sunlight.
My hair, as pale white as the rest of my sisters, fell damp over my face, and I drew back from my appearance.
This was war, I knew, and such things were expected, but I’d been drilled to keep myself as neat as possible for so long, and it hadn’t been so long ago that I was no more than a true novice. Trust to my foul luck that this war of extermination should be my first foray after attaining the rank of Battle Sister, although I suppose I was a measure more fortunate than the rest of my squad.
I lifted another silent prayer to the Emperor that if they lived, it was free of Greenskin hands, and that they otherwise had died in honor, and even now stood by his side.
“WAAAGH!”
A glottal, bestial roar split the air, and I hunkered down, drawing the laspistol on reflex and dearly wishing for my now-shattered chainsword. Even an average Ork was little more than an engine of meat and destruction, and I’d witnessed firsthand just how hard they were to kill.
I’d watched Sister Orissa be dragged to the ground and throttled by an Ork blown in half by sustained bolter fire.
Sister Superior Kalion shot the arm off of one before running it through with her chainsword, only for it to seize her head with its remaining hand and crush it like an overripe ploin.
The notion of trying to kill one with a half-charged laspistol was almost laughable.
The useless guardsman might’ve at least left his lascarbine intact.
I listened carefully, the Greenskins were hardly stealthy, and I could hear them at the far end of the hab’s hall beating down doors and tearing apart living quarters.
There was no way for me to check if they were coming my way, but the sounds suggested that they were. I considered falling back, but there was no possible way to open the door to this hab without alerting them, and if I tried to run for it, they would have a clear shot at my back.
Not even Orks could miss a power-armored target running down a straight hallway.
This was it.
The moment they reached the door of this hab where I was cowering, I was dead. I would die with nothing more than a knife, and I probably wouldn’t do more than give the Ork that butchered me a new scar to brag to its bestial fellows about while it hung my skull from its armor.
“Emperor on Earth, hear my plea,” I cursed my shaking limbs as I prayed, “give me the strength to do your will. Take my fear, that your indomitable will may fill me, take my weakness, that your unimpeachable might may guide me, take my doubt, that no thought of retreat should come to me.”
The words tumbled from my lips as the Orks grew closer, their whooping, gleeful snarls grating horribly on my ears.
“Oh Emperor, guide my hand true,” I continued, my voice shaking as salty tears crossed my lips. I tried to think of it as fear vacating my body. “Hate is my sword, let my hate pierce the xeno to its unnatural heart.” I gripped the knife tighter. “Contempt is my shield, so must I stride through fire and flame as their vile forms fall before me. Faith is my armor, for the Emperor protects.”
I braced myself to put my combat knife through the eye of the first Greenskin to enter. If it was too tall, I might still puncture its brain by ramming the blade up through its jutting, prognathic jaw.
Of course, I had no idea if brain damage would be anything like enough to stop an Ork.
Somehow I doubted it.
“The Emperor protects,” I repeated shakily, “the Emperor protects, the Emperor protects, the Emperor-”
Without warning, a bestial roar of ‘WAAAAGH’ split the air, and it was a tone that I recognized. It was an Orkish battlecry, and it was echoed deafeningly for a brief moment before the whole hab was filled with what sounded horribly like leather being ripped on a monstrous scale, and a noise not unlike an industrial pressure washer spraying a stone wall.
The harrowing cacophony persisted for no more than a handful of heartbeats.
Then there was silence.
I waited and listened, finally working up the courage to press an ear to the door, and I held my breath as I strained to hear any sound at all.
There was nothing. Nothing but the faint, drip-drip-drip of liquid.
I swallowed hard, the leather grip of my combat knife creaking as I gripped it tighter, stood, and determinedly shouldered the hab door open.
A small tide of gore flooded into the hab up to my ankles, followed by the utter stench of Ork bowel, blood, and viscera. My guts rebelled as the unspeakable smell struck me across the face like a blow from a thunder hammer, and I staggered back to vomit out what little my stomach contained.
I stood, shook, took a deep breath, and-
That was a mistake.
I stumbled back into the hab and dry heaved again and again as the stink clung to the inside of my nostrils and coated my tongue in filth. My gut clenched and spasmed painfully as I spat and hacked, while tears of pain dripped from my cheeks.
After a few moments, I mastered myself. Shame filled me, and my lone consolation was that no one had been present to witness that.
This time I took shallow breaths, trying to perceive the remains of the Orks as little as possible as I stepped fully into the hallway.
There were no Orks left worth the name, only disparate… fragments. Limbs, split and ruined, littered the entire run of the hallway. It was as if a flensing wind had swept through the hall, tearing the xenobreed to pieces such that I could not have put a guess to the number of Orks that had been in the hallway prior to whatever occurred.
No part of any Ork was even remotely intact, and the hall was a cooling and coagulating creek of gore.
I turned slowly to look down the hall, back the way that the Orks had come, and the way from which I would assume whatever did this must have come.
My heart nearly stilled in my chest.
The hall was… beautiful.
The arterial spray of the Orks had painted, in perfect arcs of arterial crimson, a three-dimensional masterpiece using the hallway itself as a canvas. I stepped backward, slowly and carefully, trying to align the image that was clearly and impossibly imprinted on the walls by an act of unspeakable violence.
“Oh, God-Emperor…”
Fresh tears trickled down my cheeks as I beheld such beauty, torn from the bodies of the unclean, to depict a hurricane of blades wielded by angelic figures that, to my eyes, seemed to be charging with abandon down the hall towards their foes.
“The Emperor protects,” I muttered as I dropped to my knees in the slowly flowing river of dead Greenskin. “Truly, the Emperor protects.”
