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《Fifteen Hours（科幻战争）》
作者:[英]Mitchel Scanlon【完结】
Synopsis (英文书籍文案)
The stalwart troops of the Imperial Guard are the first line of defence against the nemerous foes of the Imperium. Their heroisn and courage is renowned across the galaxy and their armoured might has crushed countless rebellions and invasions. This action packed novel tells the story of a lone guardsman and his baptism of fire in a combat zone where the average expected lifespan is a mere fifteen hours. Fighting hand-to-hand against the barbarous orks, he must draw upon all of his training if he is to live to see another dawn. The horrors of war are only too real in this harrowing tale of carnage and valour!
It is about one soldiers misfortune when he signs up for the Imperial Gaurd. Arivin Larn his given up his simple life of a farm boy to become a fighter in the Imperial Gaurd. He isn't too far int his training when he gets called to his first mission. However, when he and his squad make planetfall, they realise that they're on the wrong planet and soon after that, all of them die to artilaary fire exept for Larn. He finds his way to Imperial Gaurd lines. He joins a new unit and fights for his life as the enemy draw closer and closer. He was a farm boy with little to no fighting experience dropped off into one of the most deadliest killzones in the enitre galaxy. Nobody believed he would surivive the first day and everyone in his new squad gave him a 15 hour life expectancy.
It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on
the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a
million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly
with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom
a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets
cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit
by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in
His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space
Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard
and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the
Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to
hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants — and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and
most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of
technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the
promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no
peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting
gods.
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The sky was dark, and he knew he was dying.
Alone and frightened, unable to stand or even move his legs, he lay on his back in the frozen
mud of no-man’s land. Lay there helpless, his body shrouded in darkness, eyes gazing up at the
nighttime sky overhead as though trying to read some portent of his future in the cold distant stars.
Tonight, the stars kept their own counsel. Tonight, the bleak and foreboding heavens held no
comfort.
How long has it been now, he thought. How many hours?
Finding no answer to his question, he turned his head to look out at the scenery about him —
hoping at last to see some sign of rescue but there was nothing: no movement in the darkness, no
cause for hope. Around him, the bleak expanses of no-man’s land lay still and silent. A landscape
rendered featureless by the hand of night, painted black with threatening shadows, holding nothing
that spoke to his hopes or could even help him to find his bearings. He was lost and alone,
abandoned to a world of darkness, with no prospect of help or salvation. For a moment it seemed to
him he might as well be the last man left alive in the entire galaxy. Then, the thought of it gave him
cause for fear and he quickly put it from his mind.
How long now, he thought again. How many hours?
He had felt nothing when the bullet struck him. No pain, no agony, nor even anguish, just a
strange and sudden numbness in his legs as he slid toward the ground. At first, not understanding
what had happened, he had thought he had tripped. Until, cursing himself for his clumsiness, he had
tried to rise only to find his legs curiously unresponsive. It was then, as he felt the spreading warmth
of his own blood seeping across his belly, that he had realised his mistake.
In the hours since, unable to see the extent of his wounds in the darkness, he had used his
probing fingers to tell him what his eyes could not. He had been hit at the base of the spine, the
bullet leaving a fist-sized hole at the front of his stomach as it exited his body. Treating his wounds
to the best of his medical knowledge, he had stuffed them with gauze to stem the bleeding and
placed dressings over them. Though there were phials of morphia in his Guard-issue med-pack and
he had learned the “Prayer of Relief from Torment” by heart, he had no need for them. There was no
pain from his wounds — even when his probing fingers had slid past the knuckle into the ragged
hole in his stomach he had felt no physical discomfort. He did not need to be possessed of any great
medical knowledge to know that was not a good sign.
How long now, the question came to his mind again, unbidden. How many hours?
There were other discomforts, though. The chill of the cold night air biting at the exposed skin
of his face and neck, a terrible mind-wearying fatigue that made his thoughts seem dull and leaden:
the fear, the loneliness, the isolation. Worst of all, there was the silence. When first he had fallen
wounded, the night had thundered with all the cacophony of battle: the high-pitched whine of
lasguns, the crack of slugthrowers, the roar of explosions, the screams and cries of the wounded and
the dying. Sounds that gradually subsided, growing slowly more distant before finally giving way to
silence. He would never have thought a man could draw comfort from such sounds. As terrifying as
the clamour of battle had been, the quiet that followed was worse. It compounded his isolation,
leaving him alone with all his fears. Here, in the darkness, fear had become his constant companion,
plaguing his heart without remorse or respite.
How long now? The question would not leave him. How many hours?
At times, the compulsion came over him to cry out. To shout for help, to beg for mercy, to
scream, to yell, to pray — anything to break that dreadful silence. Every time it came he fought it
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with all his strength, biting his lip hard to stop the words from spilling out. He knew that to make
even the slightest sound would only be to bring death upon him all the sooner. For though his
comrades might hear him, so would the enemy. Somewhere, out there on the other side of no-man’s
land, the enemy waited in their countless millions. Waited, ever eager to fight, to maim, to kill. No
matter how terrifying it was to be trapped alone and wounded in no-man’s land, the thought of being
found by the enemy was worse. For what seemed like hours now, he had endured the silence.
Knowing that, as desperately as he might hope for rescue, he could do nothing to speed it on its way
towards him.
How long now, the thought pounded insistently in his head. How many hours?
There was so little left to him now. So little of real substance. All the things that had once meant
so much — his family, his homeworld, his faith in the Emperor — now seemed dim and distant.
Even his memories were insubstantial, as though his past was fading away before his eyes as swiftly
as was his future. His inner world, the world of his life which had once seemed so full and bright
with promise, had been diminished and reduced by circumstance. He was left with only a few
simple choices: to cry out or keep his silence, to bleed to death or take his knife and end it quickly,
to stay awake or fall asleep. At the moment, sleep seemed a tempting prospect. He was tired and
bone-weary, fatigue pulling at his sluggish mind like an insistent friend, but he would not yield to it.
He knew if he fell asleep now he would likely never awaken. Just as he knew that all these so-called
choices were simply illusions. In the end, there was only one stark choice left to him now — to live
or to die — and he refused to die.
How long now, the question again, relentless. How many hours?
But there was no answer. Resigning himself to the thought that his fate was now in the hands of
others, he waited in the silence of no-man’s land. Waited, hoping that somewhere out in the night
his comrades were already searching for him. Waited, refusing to give in or fall asleep. He waited,
caught between life and death. His life a last fitful burning spark lost amid a sea of darkness, his
mind wondering how it was he had ever come to be there at all…
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CHAPTER ONE
20:14 hours Jumal IV Central Planetary Time
(Western Summer Adjustment)
The Last of a Thousand Sunsets — A Letter Edged in Black — A Ghost in the Cellar — The
Lottery and the Tale of his Fathers
The sun was setting, its slow descent reddening the vast reaches of the westward sky and bathing the
endless wheat fields below it in shades of gold and amber as they stirred gently in the evening
breeze. In his seventeen years of life to date, Arvin Larn had seen perhaps a thousand such sunsets,
there was something about the beauty of this one that gave him pause. Enraptured, his chores for the
moment forgotten, for the first time since his childhood he simply stood and watched the setting of
die sun. Stood there, with the world still and peaceful all about him, gazing toward the gathering fall
of night as he felt a nameless emotion rising deep within his heart.
There will be other sunsets, he thought to himself. Other suns, though none of them will mean as
much to me as this one does, here and now. Nothing could mean as much as this moment does,
standing here among these wheat fields, watching the last sunset I will ever see at home.
Home. The mere thought of the word was enough to make him turn his head and look over his
shoulder across the swaying rows of ripening grain toward the small collection of farm buildings on
the other side of the field behind him. He saw the old barn with its sloping, wood-shingled roof. He
saw the round tower of the grain silo: the ginny-hen coops he had helped build with his father; the
small stock pen where they kept the draft horses and a herd of half-a-dozen alpacas.
Most of all, he saw the farmhouse where he had been born and raised. Two-storeyed, with a low
wooden porch out front and the shutters on the windows left open to let in the last of the light. Given
the unchanging routines of his family’s existence, Larn did not need to see inside to know what was
happening within. His mother would be in the kitchen cooking the evening meal, his sisters helping
her set the table, his father in the cellar workshop with his tools. Then, just as they did every night,
once their chores were done the family would sit down at the table together and eat. Tomorrow night
they would do the same again, the pattern of their lives repeating endlessly day after day, varying
only with the changing of the seasons.
It was a pattern that had endured here for as long as anyone could remember. A pattern that
would continue so long as there was anyone left to farm these lands. Though, come tomorrow night
at least, there would be one small difference.
Come tomorrow, he would no longer be here to see it.
Sighing, Larn returned to his work, turning once more to the task of trying to repair the ancient
rust-pitted irrigation pump in front of him. Before the sunset had distracted him he had removed the
outer access panel to reveal the inner workings of the pump’s motor. Now, in the fading light of
twilight, he removed the motor’s burnt-out starter and replaced it with a new one, mindful to say a
prayer to the machine spirit inside it as he tightened and re-checked the connections.
Taking a spouted canister from beside the foot of the pump he dribbled a few drops of unguent
from it into the workings. Then, satisfied everything was in order, he reached out for the large lever
at the side and worked it slowly up and down a dozen times to prime the pump before pressing the
ignition stud to start the motor. Abruptly, the pump shuddered into noisy life, the motor whining as
it strained to pull water up from aquifers lying deep below the ground. For a moment, Larn
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congratulated himself on a job well done. Until, just as the first few muddy drops of water emerged
from the mouth of the pump to stain the dry earth of the irrigation trench before it, the motor
coughed and died.
Disappointed, Larn pressed the ignition stud again. This time though, the motor stayed sullenly
silent. Leaning forward, he carefully inspected the parts of the mechanism once more — checking
the connections for corrosion, making sure the moving parts were well-lubricated and free from grit,
searching for broken wires or worn components — all the things the mechanician-acolyte in
Ferrusville had warned them about the last time the pump was serviced. Frustratingly, Larn could
find nothing wrong. As far as he could see, the pump should be working.
Finally, reluctantly forced to concede defeat, Larn lifted the discarded access panel and began to
screw it into place once more. He had so badly wanted to be able to fix the pump, with harvest time
still three weeks away, it was important the farm’s irrigation system should be in good working
order. Granted, it had been a good season so far and the wheat was growing well but the life of a
farmer was always enslaved to the weather. Without the irrigation system to fall back upon, a couple
of dry weeks now could mean the difference between feast and famine for an entire year.
But in the end he knew that was only part of it. Standing there, looking down at the pump after
