Trikster123: переводы

→The tau’s offer of a truce was regarded with a fair degree of suspicion at first, not least by Commissar Cain, to whom it had been delivered. Nevertheless, with the Imperial forces poised on the brink of annihilation, the defenders had little option but to accept it.Accordingly, when the relief flotilla arrived, accompanied by a hastily-assembled diplomatic mission and no less a personage than the Lord General himself, they found General Braddick in uncontested control of Peakhaven, to no one’s greater surprise than his own. Before long the Quadravidia garrison had been reinforced by the new arrivals[16], of sufficient strength to deter all but the most determined of assaults. But such a precaution scarcely seemed needed, as the tau remained behind the lines to which they had withdrawn immediately upon the declaration of a ceasefire.Thus it was, with a fair degree of suspicion, that negotiations began, and the tau’s motives for such an unexpected move became clear.

→I couldn’t fault his tactics, our priority was clearly to deny the tau their objective, but from where I was standing (or, more accurately, rattling around like a pea in a can), we’d just handed them the initiative again[9].

→‘All units pull back,’ General Braddick voxed, just in time to rein them in. ‘Defend the bunker.’

→At this point I began to hope that the balance might tilt the other way. The tau had a definite edge when it came to long-range shooting, but they had no stomach for getting up close and personal, while the Guard had no such qualms. In fact the death worlders making up the majority of the garrison here[8] seemed to prefer it, wading in with bayonet and lasrifle butt at every opportunity, their ork hide capes swirling about them with almost as much ferocious energy as if they were still attached to their original owners. Which didn’t mean they fought with all the finesse and tactical sense of Khornate berserkers; quite the contrary. Where they came from, survival meant using their wits as well as their weapons.

→It certainly did: a moment later the upper hatches popped and the crew bailed out, becoming easy targets for the vengeful lasgun fire of those Guardsmen still in the fight.

→‘I’m on it,’ Jurgen assured me, and triggered the flamer again, adding a burst from the hull-mounted heavy bolter for good measure. The pathfinder squad scattered from the gout of blazing promethium, which hosed up inside the transport through the still open passenger ramp. ‘That’ll give ‘em something to think about.’

→‘One of them’s got a rail rifle!’ I shouted to Jurgen, although the noise of the engine and the firefight surrounding us meant that he could only hear me over the vox-link anyway, so there was little point in raising my voice. I tried to depress the storm bolter to engage the ground troops, but a piece of debris from the exploding Hydra was jammed in the pintle, and I couldn’t swing it down far enough. ‘Frak!’

→Undeterred, I opened fire on warriors and vehicle alike, scything a hail of bolter rounds through the air they occupied. A couple of compact plasma bolts from the ground troopers’ carbines burst against the armour surrounding me in reply, gouging deep craters in the ceramite, but it held. Then a solid armour-piercing projectile slammed right through the passenger compartment, punching holes in both sides I could have pushed my fist through.

→The first of the attacking troop carriers hit the ground about a hundred metres ahead, its shock absorbers flexing against the rockcrete; even before they’d fully extended again, the boarding ramp dropped. Instantly, another pair of lethal drones soared into the air to provide fire support for the pathfinder squad disembarking from it. The xenos moved with remarkable agility despite the body armour they were encased in, their faces rendered curiously insectile by the glowing red lenses embedded in their faceplates.

→Though checked by their first confrontation with the Imperium’s might, the expansionist ambitions of the tau were far from blunted. The next two hundred years were marked by periodic clashes between the two powers, as frontier worlds were annexed, defended, reclaimed, and in many cases lost again. Indeed, Semplaxia was to change hands seven times in all, before ultimately being lost to both sides as the outliers of Hive Fleet Kraken smashed into the Eastern Arm, although such a case was exceptional. For the most part, what the tau gained by subterfuge or the force of arms they kept, although the Imperium made them pay a heavy price, and were even able to claim some notable successes of their own, such as the reclamation of Gravalax in 931.Had the forces of the Emperor been able to concentrate their full might on the upstart usurpers, things would have been very different of course, but the last quarter of M41 was riven with conflict on every front. To the ever-present menace of the orks and the fell designs of the Traitor Legions was added the gradual awakening of the necrons, who began to attack human outposts in ever-increasing numbers, while the eldar continued their piractical raids seemingly at will. Perhaps fortunately the tau, too, were beginning to fall foul of these enemies and others more and more frequently as their sphere of influence expanded, preventing them from engaging in an all-out invasion of Imperial space.The stalemate was eventually broken in 992, when a tau fleet striking deep inside the Imperial border appeared in orbit around Quadravidia, rapidly overwhelming the planetary defences, and landing an invasion force. Once in uncontested control, denying Imperial access to the vital warp currents which flowed together there, they would have effectively blockaded eight of the disputed systems in the border region, cutting them off from reinforcement, and leaving them free to be picked off at their leisure.Fortunately for these imperilled worlds, the second relief expedition was led by Ciaphas Cain, the renowned commissar who had been so instrumental in foiling the tau designs on Gravalax, and was to prove more than equal to this fresh and more urgent threat to Imperial interests.

→Quadravidia will be a familiar destination for most seasoned travellers in and around the Damocles Gulf, since it has the great good fortune to be situated at the confluence of no fewer than four warp currents of unusual swiftness and stability. Unsurprisingly, therefore, this is a world, or, to be more precise, an entire planetary system, which tends to be passed through rather than visited. Indeed, it is quite possible to transfer between vessels aboard one of the many orbital docks and void stations which ring it about without ever setting foot on the planet at all.Nevertheless, it can be worth breaking a longer journey here for a prolonged sojourn, or even making it the intended destination of an indefinite stay. Though it’s true to say that at first sight the principal cities around the equator offer little to the discriminating wayfarer, consisting as they do almost entirely of starport facilities, the vulgar commercial institutions deemed necessary by those engaged in trade, and the habitations of the artisan classes apparently required in depressingly high numbers to ensure the efficient running of both, Peakhaven is as gratifyingly cosmopolitan as any planetary capital in that region of space.Set high in the mountain range which sprawls along the equator, bisecting the western continent, its streets and avenues cling to the sides of peak and valley alike, the highest ramparts of which wall off the worst of the noise and bustle of the starport. This is thus confined to a broad depression, some three or four kilometres across, surrounded by higher mountains. It goes without saying that lodgings should be sought on the outer wall of the rim, since the intervening mass of granite effectively muffles most of the sound of the constant shuttle traffic. The sight of it is quite spectacular, however, particularly at night, when the engine glows make a constant vortex of light in the darkness, like the sparks above a forge.Smaller towns and villages are, of course, to be found elsewhere on the two continents, but contain little of interest. From The Crusade and After: A Military History of the Damocles Gulf, by Vargo Royz, 058.M42.

→From Interesting Places and Tedious People: A Wanderer’s Waybook, by Jerval Sekara, 145.M39.

→It will hardly come as a surprise to most of my readers that, beyond a few desultory complaints about the air temperature, Cain says little about Quadravidia itself. The following extracts may go some way towards remedying this deficiency.

→‘Incoming!’ I voxed, opening fire with the storm bolter as I did so, quietly cursing my luck. The attack I’d anticipated, and come so close to avoiding, had arrived.

→It was as well that I did, for in regaining my balance my eyes drifted skywards. Black shapes were moving above the buildings the fading light had now reduced to stark-edged silhouettes; etched against the crimson glow, the gracefully sinister curvature of their surfaces betraying their origin unmistakably.

→I clambered into the passenger compartment, returning the salutes of a squad of Guardsmen double-timing it past us in the direction of the main gate as I did so. With reflexes honed by decades of exposure to Jurgen’s robust driving style, I grabbed at the pintle mount for support an instant before we jerked into motion.

→‘Ready whenever you are, sir,’ my aide assured me, scrambling into the driving seat of the Salamander we’d requisitioned from the transport pool shortly after our arrival. The engine was grumbling quietly to itself already, Jurgen being far too seasoned a veteran to risk even the second or two’s delay that firing it up would take if we were caught flat-footed this close to a combat zone.

→‘Thank you,’ I said, sipping the fragrant beverage, and savouring the tendril of warmth which oozed its way down into my stomach. ‘Shall we go?’

→‘Tanna, sir?’ Jurgen said, producing a flask from somewhere among the tangle of webbing he was habitually festooned with, and I took it gratefully. The evenings were chill here in the equatorial mountains, where the capital had been founded, although why they hadn’t put it somewhere a little more clement was beyond me[7].

→Our brief exchange was punctuated by heavy weapon discharges flickering in the distance like a gathering storm, lacerating the grey overcast of early evening, stark against the red-tinged sky. Not all the red was due to the sunset either; hab blocks were ablaze in a dozen places throughout the beleaguered city. Unfortunately the firestorms hampered our movements as much as the tau, if not more so: the xenos were able to hop about in their anti-gravitic vehicles pretty much as they wished, instead of having to grind their way along laboriously cleared routes like our Chimeras and Leman Russ were forced to do, only to end up in the middle of an ambush as like as not.