The battle dragged on into the afternoon. Felix and his growing group assailed the bunker nearby, slaughtering the Death Guard within, who were quickly overcome by the Centurions’ heavy weapons and Malcades’ powerful armaments.

The enemy’s resistance was dogged, but doomed. Little more than four Plague Marine companies and auxiliary cultists manned the trenches. The fighting was hard, but it could have been so much harder. Felix expected daemons, or daemon engines, but none came. For all the Plague Marines’ hardiness, they were massively outnumbered and quickly bested. The force Guilliman applied was so utterly overwhelming that they stood no chance.

The price, however, was high. Thunderhawks and unarmed lighters came and went over the battlefield, taking the dead and their precious gene-seed away. Many Space Marines had fallen. Felix wondered if any of their progenoid glands of those who had died in the mud could be salvaged without the risk of contamination.

As soon as the last Plague Marine in the trenches was killed, human cleansing teams moved into the complex and began purification by fire. Priests followed when there were transports available, and by late afternoon were chanting prayers over the trenches.

Fighting continued within the city. With the trench network’s firepoints and weapons batteries out of action, Imperial aircraft flew over the river in increasing numbers, depositing troops from all arms of the Imperium’s forces close in to the city limits. Gunfire soon crackled up from the cathedral towers of the centre, and Felix pushed on to join it. He bade farewell to the Genesis Chapter, but his small band of warriors grew ever larger. Most of his own troops had made the crossing alive and found him as the day wore on. As he reached the edge of the trenches, he joined with a second large group of Ultramarines and lost warriors from other Chapters. They had no captain with them, and deferred to Felix’s command.

Beyond the double lines, the earth was less torn up. Espandor’s abundant vegetation had been reduced by the poisons of the enemy to a few hardy species scattered on plains of cracked earth, none of them healthy-looking. Brightly coloured pools of water filled the scattering of shell craters. Clouds of flies gathered in noisy conclave over these noxious watering holes, and a chemical tang fouled the air, carried by a thin mist hanging over the blighted earth, but it was already lifting. The clouds of flies simply seemed to vanish when the Death Guard were bested, and as more Plague Marines fell, fewer flies were in evidence. The day cleared. The sun appeared wanly behind the thinning, toxic clouds.