本文是对于Tom Chivers所著的故事THE REWARD OF LOYALTY的原文以及译文展示。
原文及其一切权利归GW所有，本人的翻译仅供参考学习交流使用。
(相关资料图)
正文如下：
There was something on her visor.
她的视野中有东西。
That wasn’t the most important thing – she knew that – but it was all Commander Riva Vistrena could think about. She clawed at her face, wiping whatever it was – blood? Mud? – from her vision. Her ears were ringing. She realised, slowly, that she was lying on her back. The sky was dark through the lumpy muck covering her eyes.
那不是最重要的东西-她清楚这一点——但是那都是瑞瓦-维斯崔娜指挥官可以想到的。她爪向她的脸，抹去遮在眼前上面的东西——不论那是血？泥？
她的耳朵在鸣响。她慢慢地意识到了，她正靠在她的背上。
她的眼睛被厚厚的淤泥遮住，天空一片漆黑。
She tried to piece the last few seconds together. They had been holding the ridge, she and her squad. The foul horde of the dead had been in front of her, perhaps fifty yards away, and her troopers’ las-fire had been keeping them at bay. Her own plasma pistol had been warm in her hands, cutting down one of the shambling horrors each time it powered up and fired, and from just behind them their Taurox’s autocannons chattered and barked. The weapons fire lit up the pallid, unhealthy fog around them.
她试图把最后几秒钟的画面拼凑起来。她和她的小队一直守着山脊。那群肮脏的死人就在她前面，大约五十码开外，她的步兵用激光火力把他们压得动弹不得。她自己的等离子手枪在她手里一直很温暖，每次它启动并开火时，都会干掉一个蹒跚而行的活体恐惧，而就在他们身后，金牛座的自动炮咔咔作响，咆哮着。武器的火光照亮了他们周围苍白、不健康的迷雾。
Then there had been a roar of engines. A personnel carrier of unfamiliar design, huge and dark green, came skidding to a halt a few yards behind their line, next to the Chimera. It had made a pervasive humming sound, and she had noticed that it didn’t sit on tracks but floated, a hand’s width or so above the ground. It couldn’t be! she thought. The holy Angels? Alongside us? Its rear hatch had slammed down, and five huge, dark figures had emerged from it…
接着是引擎的轰鸣声。一辆设计陌生的巨大深绿色运兵车，在他们队伍后面几码处，在奇美拉旁边滑了下来。它发出了一种渗透而出的嗡嗡声，她注意到它并不着陆而是悬浮在地面上一掌宽左右的地方。不可能!她想。那些神圣的天使?与我们并肩?它的后舱口砰地关上了，五个巨大的黑影从里面钻了出来……
And then something had happened. A beam of painfully bright light had speared out of the fog from the right flank and struck one of the figures. A chatter of bolter fire came from all sides. Then there was a soft, horrible phut sound, something landed in the middle of her squad, and before she could shout grenade! the world went white, then black, and now here she was.
然后发生了一些事情。一道刺眼的强光从右侧的雾中刺出来，打在其中一个人影上。从四面八方传来隆隆的爆弹火力声。接着，她听到一声轻柔而可怕的“砰”的声音，什么东西落在她的队伍中间。
她还没来得及喊“手榴弹!”
世界就变白了，然后变黑，现在她在这里。
She managed to wipe the worst of the filth from her visor. There were pinkish lumps in it.
Shaking her head to clear it, still deafened by the blast, she looked around herself. The pale fog hid everything. She crawled, plasma pistol still in her hands, towards an unidentifiable chunk of twisted wreckage that lay nearby, just below the ridge she had been holding a few moments before. She hunkered behind it, breath pounding.
The ringing in her ears was dying away. It was replaced by… silence. Or nearly. There was a chittering and groaning in the distance that set her teeth on edge, but worse was the silence, and it took her a moment to understand why.
The sound of las-fire had stopped.
Slowly, she crawled towards the rear door of the Taurox. Her squadmates had gone.
她设法把面罩上最脏的东西擦掉。里面有粉红色的肿块。
她摇着头，想理清头绪，但仍然被爆炸声震得耳聋，她环顾四周。苍白的雾掩盖了一切。她爬着，手里还拿着等离子手枪，向附近一大块无法辨认的扭曲残骸走去，就在她几分钟前守住的山脊下面。她蹲在它后面，呼吸急促。
她耳中的嗡嗡声渐渐消失了。取而代之的是……沉默，或是接近沉默。远处传来一阵叽叽喳喳的声音和呻吟声，这使她感到不安，但更糟糕的是沉默，她过了一会儿才明白为什么。
激光开火的声音停止了。
她慢慢地爬向金牛座的后门。她的队员们都没了。
No – no, they hadn’t. There they were. There was Jackpot, his collar popped up as usual, against regulations: he had a shrapnel wound that had removed the side of his neck. There was grey-haired Boomer, her lieutenant, with a perfectly cauterised hole in his chest that she could have put her fist through. Neither was moving. On the ridge itself were scattered bits of armour and flesh that probably accounted for most of the rest.
不，不呀。他们还在这里。这里是头奖，他的袖口如同平时一样违规打开了：他有个弹片伤，削掉了他脖子的一边。这里是灰发的布玛，她的副官，他的胸口上有一个烧穿的大洞，她可以把拳头都穿过去。没一个还能动弹。在山脊上还散落着装甲和血肉碎片，大概就是剩下的绝大多数人的下场。
Nearer to her, though, there were other bodies. The great dark figures that she had seen burst out of the unidentified personnel carrier were lying scattered around. They wore armour of a rich dark green, their faces helmed. The Emperor’s Angels! she thought, awed, and horrified. She made the sign of the aquila over her breastplate, and instinctively muttered a prayer to He on Terra; only once before had she glimpsed one of the Astartes. She had seen him only for a moment, and from a great distance: even then she had trembled at the sight. She never dreamed she would see five of His great Angels so close.
不过，离她更近的地方还有其他尸体。她看到从身份不明的运兵车里冲出来的巨大的黑影散落在各处。他们穿着深绿色的盔甲，脸上戴着头盔。帝皇的天使!她心里想，既敬畏又恐惧。她在胸甲上比了个天鹰的手势，本能地向泰拉上的他低声祈祷;在此之前，她只瞥见过一个阿斯塔特。她只看了他一会儿，而且是在很远的地方;即使在那时，她看到这一幕就发抖了。她做梦也没有想到自己能如此近距离地看到五位他的大天使。
But if she had dreamed it, she would not have dreamed it like this. The figures were in unnatural positions, their armour scarred with bolt-damage and shrapnel, or displaying seared, open wounds like those on Boomer’s body. She recognised plasma burns when she saw them, and she saw them now. Their transport, whatever it was, was no longer hovering but sitting broken in the mud.
And now, out of the mist, strode a giant.
但即便她梦到过，她也不会梦到这样的。这些人的姿势是不自然的，他们的盔甲上有爆弹和弹片的伤痕，或者显示出像布玛身上一样的烧焦的开放性伤口。她看到等离子烧伤时就认出来了，现在她也看到它们了。他们的交通工具，不管它是什么，它不再悬浮，而是破损地躺在泥里。
现在，一个巨人从雾中走了出来。
He was wearing black armour much like that of the Angels of Death, but bigger, and older – Terminator armour, she remembered from briefings. Its pauldrons and greaves were marked with scars of long use, and it buzzed and creaked as he approached, fluid leaking from the joints. He walked with an oddly arrhythmical stride, as though he was limping. Smoke, acrid and unhealthy, pumped from vents on his back and from two censers on his shoulders. His helm was eyeless; a curved blade rose from its forehead like a horn. His left shoulder bore a gold sigil of three skulls arranged in a triangle.
他穿着如同死亡天使们一样的黑色甲胄，但是更大，更古老，那是终结者盔甲，她从简报中记起来了。它的肩甲和护腿上都有长期使用的伤痕，当他走近时，它发出嗡嗡声和嘎吱声，液体从关节处漏出。他走起路来步伐古怪，好象一瘸一拐的。他背上的通风口和肩上的两个香炉冒出刺鼻而不健康的烟。他的头盔没有眼睛;一把弯曲的刀刃从他的额头上伸出来，像角一样。他的左肩膀上有三个头骨排成三角形的金色纹章。
He spoke. Through the ancient armour’s vox-emitter, his voice buzzed like a million flies over a battlefield full of rotting dead, but she could still hear what sounded like a chuckle in his tone.
‘That was not as challenging as I had hoped,’ he boomed. ‘Our less enlightened kin are never anything but a disappointment to me.’
In one hand, as easily as she would her pistol, he held an ancient combi-plasma gun. It dripped oil and coolant, and appeared to be held together with rust and slime, and yet somehow its coils still shone, uncomfortably bright. His other hand was a great blade, serrated and black, with lines of greenish fluid running along its surface like veins under skin.
他说话。透过古老盔甲的音阵发报器，他的声音嗡嗡作响，就像无数只苍蝇飞过满是腐烂尸体的战场，但她仍然能听到他的语气中有一种窃笑的声音。
“这没有我想的那么有挑战性，”他低沉地说。“我们那些不太开明的血亲总是让我失望。”
他一手握着一把古老的等离子组合枪，就像她拿手枪一样轻松。它滴着油和冷却剂，似乎是用铁锈和黏液粘在一起的，但不知怎的，它的线圈仍然闪闪发光，亮得令人不舒服。他的另一只手拿的是一把巨大的锯齿状黑色刀刃，表面流淌着绿色的液体，就像皮肤下的血管。
She knew at once that this figure too was an Angel, but she recoiled instantly at the blasphemy of the thought. She had met and fought regiments of the Astra Militarum who had turned traitor, but surely the Astartes could not fall so low? The idea of the Emperor’s perfect warriors corrupted was too much for her to hold in her mind.
The Terminator spotted a twitch from one of the Angels, and knelt, slowly and almost kindly, beside him. Then he pushed his blade through the banded fibres at the throat of the fallen warrior’s armour. There was another twitch, and then no more.
她马上就知道这个人也是一个天使，但是她一想到这种想法中的渎神之处就立刻退缩了。她曾与叛变的星界军团作战，但阿斯塔特一定不会堕落到如此地步吧?关于帝皇的完美战士堕落的想法对她来说太震撼了，无法在她的脑海中保持。
那个终结者发现其中一个天使抽搐了一下，就慢慢地、几乎是友好地跪在他身边。然后他用自己的剑刺穿了倒下战士盔甲咽喉处的带状纤维。接着又有一个抽搐，然后就再也没有动静了。
