Vorlese, though… Vorlese was different. A far more prominent world, made all the more so by its narrow rescue from the fleet of the Despoiler, especially since it had taken the intervention of the accursed Guilliman to do so. The psychological blow of its loss would be exponentially larger than that of Gallimo Prime, and – if Radimir’s suspicions were borne out – Vorlese’s absorption into the warp would greatly disrupt one of the major warp routes to Terra on which it sat, and from which it acquired its prominence.

After Vorlese… well, there were many possibilities, should the gods grant that he survive. Radimir was a weapon of Chaos, and he would not stop striking blows for it until his life was exhausted and he took his final reward from the Ruinous Powers. Perhaps he could further isolate the Throneworld, or disrupt another crucial point elsewhere in the galaxy. The Great Rift and its siblings meant that some narrow corridors of real space clung only tenuously to existence, bordered on all sides by the howling warp; a cut in reality, in just the right place…

‘Who’s there?’ a muffled voice shouted, and the beam of a luminator snapped on and swung towards him through the smog.

‘Radimir,’ he called, making sure he could be heard despite the impediment of his respirator. The guard must have recognised his voice, because they lowered their weapon and the luminator attached to it. As Radimir approached, and the obstruction of the smog diminished, he made out the features of Faney. She was a local ganger, and handled her shotgun as though she’d been born with it in her hands, but the fingers of those hands were tipped with claws that marked her out as a mutant. She’d fled from her gang before she could be found out, and ended up falling in with the Children of the Serpent in the interests of survival as much as anything else.

Radimir clapped her on the shoulder as he walked past. A certain camaraderie had been a crucial part of the unseen glue that held the Children together so far, and he needed that to continue. The Children would have to guard and oversee the ritual once he’d set it in motion, while he made his escape off-world. If they trusted him, they would protect the very spell that would end up killing them all, until it was too late. If they didn’t trust him – if, for example, he’d put their backs up by being overly aloof – then there was always the risk that the canker of suspicion would take hold. Nothing angered a betrayer so much as believing themselves to be betrayed in turn, and the followers of Chaos knew best of anyone that no plan was foolproof, and there was no scheme that could not be undone by chance events.

He was a few paces past Faney when he felt it.