小说下载尽在http://www.txtnovel.net---书香门第【gzbysh】整理
附：【本作品来自互联网,本人不做任何负责】内容版权归作者所有!
《Rebel Winter（科幻战争）》
作者:[英]Steve Parker【完结】
Synopsis (英文书籍文案)
The story opens with Captain Grigorius Sebastev on trial for his actions on the ice-encrusted battlefields of Danik's World. The novel ends with verdict and a surprise. The rest tells the tale of what Captain Sebastev (A.K.A. The Pit-Dog, though few would say it to his face) and how he reacted. Captain Sebastev and his men of Fifth Company are in the Korris trench works, in the midst of a brutal battle with greenskins (orks) when the new commissar arrives and jumps into the fray.
Commissar Daridh Ahl Karif had made a powerful enemy (Lord General Breggius) and been redeployed to Danik's World. Yet Karif still took the newest (and only) reenforcement troop under his wing. The commissar instinctively knows that Trooper Danil Stavin would not last long on the front lines. Karif surprised everyone, including himself, when he requested Trooper Stavin be assigned as his adjutant. Trooper Stavin turns out to be a top notch adjutant. The lad is very good at keeping secrets. In fact, he has a few of his own.
The frekk hits the fan when Twelfth Army Command underestimates the Danikkin Independence Army (DIA). The rebels make sure they regret it too. Nhalich is the first to fall. Traitors from within and without crippled the Vostroyan army by poisoning food and saboteurs vehicles, weapons, and supplies. Sebastev and Karif come to quickly realize that Fifth Company may very well be all that remains of the Sixty-Eighth. As the company's number of men slowly drop from the four digits, to the three digits, and to the two digits, the Pit-Dog knows that with numbers such as these, there is no such thing as acceptable losses. Somehow, they must find a way to win the war from behind enemy lines, and get out alive, before all is lost.
“Secession — let a single rebel world go unpunished and countless more will rise up, all
clamouring for those religious and economic freedoms better known to loyal citizens of the
Imperium as heresy and ingratitude.
“On Danik’s World, the seeds of rebellion were planted in the deep snows of an ice age that
ravaged the planet for two thousand years. It began when volcanic eruptions on the southern
continent filled the atmosphere with debris and plunged the land into darkness. The sudden climatic
change wiped out over half the human population and reduced planetary productivity to almost
nothing. On countless occasions in the years that followed, one loyalist governor after another
begged the Administratum for aid. Eventually, the Administratum approved the deferment of
Imperial tributes, but more direct aid in the form of food and technologies was repeatedly denied.
Imperial coffers, the Danikkin were told, were being drained by anti-xenos campaigns throughout
the segmentum.
“When Danikkin scientists finally announced the beginning of a slow return to warmer
temperatures, the population had climbed to two-thirds of its pre-catastrophe figure. An estimated
ninety-three per cent of that population supported open revolt against the Imperium. The central
figure behind this movement was Lord General Graush Vanandrasse, High Commander of the
Danikkin Planetary Defense Force.
“Vanadrasse had spent his life rising through the ranks of the PDF, finally attaining absolute
command at the age of sixty-one. Mere months after his accession, he led his forces in a bloody
coup against troops loyal to the Planetary Governor. He celebrated victory by renaming his force
the Danikkin Independence Army. To ensure absolute loyalty to his vision of planetary
independence, he established a brutal organization of elite officers called the Special Patriotic
Service.
“Agents of this so-called Special Patriotic Service publicly executed the legitimate Planetary
Governor and his family, and sent a formal notice of secession to the Administratum.
“Two years later, in 766.M41, Lord Marshal Graf Harazahn of the Vostroyan Firstborn — then
charged with overseeing all ground operations in the Second Kholdas War — relented before
pressure from the Administratum and agreed to send a small punitive force to Danik’s World.
Twelfth Army was formed for this purpose and deployed under the leadership of General Vogor
Vlastan — a man for whom Harazahn allegedly bore little genuine respect.
“Twelfth Army’s orders were to crush the Danikkin rebels, restore order, and return to action in
the Second Kholdas War with all due haste. As the old adage goes, however, few plans survive first
contact with the enemy.
“The climate and the rebels were bad enough, and Twelfth Army underestimated both. But there
was another force present on Danik’s World for which General Vlastan and his Guardsmen were
unprepared — a force that would claim all too many of Vostroya’s firstborn sons.
“The old foe, you see, had got there first.”
Extract: Hammer and Shield: Collected Essays on the History of the Second Kholdas War, eds.
Commissar-Colonel (Ret.) Keisse von Holh (716.M41-805.M41) & Major (Ret.) Wyllum Imrilov
(722.M41-793.M41)
5
A TRIAL BEGINS
The Exedra Udiciarum Seddisvarr was a grand place indeed, as grand and dark as an Imperial
mausoleum. The ancient court had stood for millennia, echoing with the sounds of innumerable
trials, both military and civil. Stylised images of the God-Emperor and His saints stared with
unblinking eyes from great stained-glass windows, weighing the souls of the innocent and the guilty.
Tapestries hung from the dark marble walls, their fading colours straggling to contrast the aura
of the room: here, an image of Tech-Magos Benandanti, who’d rediscovered the Kholdas Cluster in
M37 and restored it to its rightful place in the Imperial fold; there, Saint Hestor, who’d led loyalist
forces against the dread armies of the Idols Dark, which had spilled from the warpstorm at the
cluster’s centre in M39. Around these worthy historical figures, pre-Winter Danikkin iconography
spoke of better days, days before the people had turned from their God-Emperor’s light.
Had the faith of these people remained unbroken, the Vostroyan Firstborn might never have set
foot on Danik’s World. Dead men might yet live. Then again, thought Captain Grigorius Sebastev,
as well to die on this world as on some other, so long as one dies well.
As commanding officer of the Firstborn Sixty-Eighth Infantry Regiment’s Fifth Company,
Sebastev went where his Emperor needed him. It was as simple as that. For now, he stood patiently
in the dock, awaiting the beginning of his trial, uncomfortable and self-conscious in his ill-fitting
dress uniform.
He was a stocky man, short for a Vostroyan, but thickset and powerful. In the days since his
return to Command HQ in Seddisvarr, with solid meals and little to do in his cell but practise the
forms of the ossbokh-vyar, he’d quickly regained the size and strength he’d lost since being posted
to the Eastern Front. His bright red jacket, piped with shining gold brocade, strained to contain the
thick muscles of his chest and back.
He’d have given anything for the familiar comfort of battle fatigues and a greatcoat. Strutting
and posturing like the highborn officers had never interested him. Sebastev was a fighter, a brawler.
His men called him the Pit-Dog, though rarely to his face since it tended to ignite his temper.
A dozen servo-skulls drifted overhead, carrying braziers filled with hot coals, but the air would
hardly be warmer by the time the judges took their seats. That would set them in foul spirits from
the outset. No matter. His future was in the Emperor’s hands, as it had always been.
Sebastev shifted his gaze to the most central of the hall’s windows and looked up at the glowing
image of the Emperor. “Light of all Mankind,” he said, uncaring that the bailiffs behind him would
hear, I’ve lived my life on the battlefield, serving your will. “Let me die doing so.”
Someone coughed off to Sebastev’s right, and echoes chased each other up the stone walls to the
shadowy reaches of the high ceiling. Sebastev turned.
“Really, captain,” said a man sitting alone on the observers’ benches, “must you be so gloomy
this early in the morning?”
It was the commissar. He looked well rested, healthy. A few days away from the fighting had
taken the sunken look from his cheeks. His oiled black hair shone as it had when they’d first met.
The ubiquitous cap, the symbol of the man’s rank, sat neatly on the bench by his side.
“Commissar,” said Sebastev with a nod. He was surprised to note a feeling of comfort at the
man’s presence. No matter what transpired during this hearing, the commissar had been right there
in the thick of things. He’d played his part and knew the truth. But how would he testify? For all
they’d been through together, the man was still something of an unknown quantity to Sebastev. He
6
was brave enough, yes, and had demonstrated his dedication and loyalty to the Emperor, but he was
also chevek, an outsider, a non-Vostroyan. The minds of such men were frustratingly difficult to
comprehend.
A flicker of movement on the balcony above the benches caught Sebastev’s eye. He lifted his
gaze from the commissar and saw a curious duo sitting in the balcony’s front row. Two figures
diametrically opposed in bearing stared back at him, a man and a woman, though the term “man”
seemed hardly adequate to describe the former.
The woman sat hunched, almost drowning in the black folds of her robe. Her back was bent, her
body twisted with age. She appeared no larger than a child of ten, but from the shadows of her cowl,
her eyes shone with wisdom and a sharp intellect.
Was she Danikkin? An off-worlder? The sight of her made Sebastev uncomfortable, but he
couldn’t fathom why.
Next to the crone, dwarfing her utterly, sat a man who seemed nothing less than a statue cut
from living marble. His skin was the white of daylit snow, and his spotless robes did little to mask
the gargantuan body beneath. He was absolutely hairless, reinforcing the illusion of stone
construction, but that illusion was shattered when Sebastev met the man’s gaze. His eyes were
blood-red, even where they should have been white.
Sebastev had never seen such a figure, so ghostly and yet so overwhelmingly solid, in all his
travels across the Imperium of Man. Who were these people? And what in the blasted warp were
they doing at this trial?
He might have asked them had the silence not been shattered at that moment. Doors banged as
they were thrown open, and the air filled with the tumult of booted feet on marble flooring. A mixed
crowd of Munitorum staff and Vostroyan military personnel poured into the room, chattering loudly
as they took their seats.
Sebastev scanned the crowd for familiar faces, but could find no sign of his men. He wasn’t
surprised. In all likelihood, Old Hungry, or General Vogor Vlastan, as the bastard was more
properly known, had forbidden their presence among the spectators. Sebastev turned his eyes from
the crowd and faced forward, just in time to see the door of the judges’ chambers crack open. A
wash of warmth and orange light spilled into the hall. The general’s military judiciary entered
slowly and in single file.
Sebastev couldn’t keep a scowl from his face as his eyes tracked the bloated figure of the
general. He was a ruin of a man, confined to a multi-legged mechanical chair wired directly to his
nerves via data-plugs at the base of his skull. The chair carried him to his place at the judges’ bench
with smooth, spider-like movements.
Sebastev raised his right hand to his brow in a sharp but grudging salute.
“In the name of the Emperor,” called the court secretary, “all rise!”
The people on the spectators’ benches clattered to their feet, and the trial of Captain Grigorius
Sebastev began.
7
CHAPTER ONE
Day 681
Korris Trenchworks — 08:59hrs, -25°C
Morning at the Eastern Front began, as it most often did, with the dark sky shifting from midnight
blue to slate-grey. Down on the ground, everything turned a brilliant white. Only regular clearance
work prevented the heavy snow from filling the Vostroyan trenches. Out here, eight kilometres east
of the town proper, the only true shelter to be found was in the dugouts that the engineering teams
had cut into the frozen earth. If Sebastev lived through this campaign — and the odds were against
it, given the wretched state of things — he was sure he’d remember it, not for the fury of the warpdamned
orks or the desperation of the filthy rebels, but for the relentless assault of the Danikkin
deep winter.
Icy winds gusted down the firing trench, catching the snow as it fell, and hurling it against his
men with a fury that was almost human. Fur hats and cloaks became coated on their windward side.
But the Vostroyan Firstborn had weathered worse in their time. It would take more than the
Danikkin ice-age to shake their commitment to the fight. Vostroyan pride was at stake here.
Sebastev moved up to the firing step, raised his head over the lip of the trench and peered out
between coils of rusting razorwire and sandbags frozen hard as rock. The deep winter had pulled
powdery blankets over yesterday’s dead, and there was little evidence of the violence that had
shaken the earth. Only irregular mounds of snow on the otherwise level battlefield hinted at the
multitude of dead xenos that lay beneath.
Given the uniform white that lay before him, it was hard to believe a battle had been fought here
at all: no scorched ground, no smoking craters. Yet, barely twenty hours ago, Sebastev had led his
men in a bloody defence of these very trenches.
Here he was again, called back from the warmth of his bunk after First Company scouts had
alerted the regiment to a massing of enemy forces beyond the tree line to the east. Tired as they
were, those off-duty had quickly reassembled to face the inevitable attack.
The orks, damn them all, seemed impervious to the deep winter.
On either side of Sebastev, the trenches snaked off north and south into the snow veiled distance,
filled with men in greatcoats of deep red, cinched under plates of polished golden armour. These
were his men, the men of the Sixty-Eighth Infantry Regiment’s Fifth Company. They stamped their
feet on the frozen planking of the trench floor, and rubbed gloved hands over their weapons to keep
the mechanisms from freezing. Their pockets bulged with lasgun power packs waiting to be loaded
