The familiar sights and smells of the ship mellowed his sadness into a sweeter melancholy. As he thought, he let his feet lead him from the portside hangar up towards the spinal way. When he emerged into its avenue, his spirits lifted further. Every part of the ship was familiar to him: the companionways which clung to the sides of the corridor; the regularly repeated stamp of the Machina Opus on the bulkheads; the massive blast door housings; the way the starlight slanted in through the spinal way’s high armourglass windows. The ship was small enough that the footings of its dorsal fortresses projected into the spinal way as large plasteel cubes, their lower levels joined together by catwalks and sealed ammunition tubes. A figure shrunken by perspective was moving across the network up there, like an arachnid in its web.

Small was a relative term regarding Imperial voidcraft. The spinal way was fifteen metres wide, and almost three times as tall. Compared to the Macragge’s Honour, the Rudense was a minnow, but it was still large enough to get lost in.

Felix laughed at himself. Who was he to fret over Guilliman’s yearning for the past, when he was becoming overly sentimental himself? Why else would he be there, on his way to deliver orders that could have been sent by a simple datasquirt? What was he doing? Did he crave his brothers’ approval? Did he wish to impress them, to remind them he was still part of their fraternity? Did he fear that he was not?

He was no longer a Greyshield, of course. Not any more. He missed that; he missed them. The others would miss it too, now it was over.

The spinal way ended abruptly, narrowing to a steep funnel. The funnel further split into three separate corridors and two flights of stairs that led into the maze of holds, stores and generatoria that sat forward of the enginarium and the thrumming reactor-heart of the ship.

The leftmost corridor led him towards the Space Marines’ accommodation. The Primaris armouries were that way, as were their training rooms and the small apothecarion, sited amidships, safely away from the hull. The equipment required for a demi-company occupied a lot of room. He passed a garage where five Repulsor grav-tanks waited in silence, bolted down to the floor around the gaping shaft of a vehicle elevator.