There was no bombardment. Too many times the dead had clawed their way back up from the earth, taking the defenders by surprise, and shells for the big guns were running low. Espandor was remote, always had been, right at the edge of Ultramar. Supply had become increasingly difficult as the Plague Fleets stepped up their activities. Even back in the days of the Five Hundred Worlds it had been isolated, though when so many other worlds had been cut loose from Ultramar thousands of years ago, Espandor had remained within the fold.

The dead staggered onwards, slack expressions on their faces. They did not speak or make any sound. Only the sucking of the mud at their feet and the drumming of the rain accompanied their march.

Their flesh was rent, innards hanging from split stomachs, greening muscles exposed in ragged skin. There was no way an organism like that could function. All the men stationed on Espandor knew the dead for being born of warpcraft. The commissars ruthlessly dealt with any found speaking of such things, but they were facing unnatural monsters. Sorcery. It could not be denied.

Varens let out a tense sigh. His breath was sour in his mask.

From a way down the line, one of the last regimental priests bellowed prayers into the silent advance. The dead turned away from that quadrant as if ordered. Varens wished there were more holy men. Cardinals ruled Espandor in the name of the Adeptus Ministorum, though it was subordinate to Macragge, and so there were many men who claimed to be holy in its cities. But the priests of the world rarely came to the front. They were busy beseeching the Emperor to turn away the clouds of flies from the cities, they said, and tending to the many sick, and overseeing the disposal of the dead before they could reawaken. They had their hands full.

Varens thought them cowards.

He had been terrified at the sight of plague zombies in the beginning, but Varens’ fear lessened with each exposure. For all the horror of their being, the dead were clumsy. They were only dangerous in large numbers, and these assaults, though unpleasant, were easily dealt with.

Once, a theatre of war like Espandor would have attracted the attentions of the Ultramarines themselves, but there were worse things attacking their empire, and they were needed elsewhere. There were supposedly Space Marines on Espandor somewhere. Varens’ couldn’t say if that were true. He had never seen them.

The dead drew closer, lips smacking wordlessly together in a parody of living speech.

‘Fire!’ roared Lieutenant Attinus.

Ruby las-lights stabbed out from the trench. The air cracked. Rain hissed loudly into steam, generating rank, warm clouds that settled on the line and thickened the fog.

‘Fire!’ ordered the lieutenant again.

Multiple lasbeams riddled the corpse walkers. The dead began their dance, jigging as beams of coherent light blasted divots from their ruined bodies, but still they did not fall.