‘Four hours, thirty-six minutes, nine seconds, primarch.’

‘Inform Captains Felix and Sicarius that I am rested. Tell the command deck to expect my presence shortly. Summon my arming servitors and master of arms. I will go to them now.’

‘As you wish, primarch,’ said the voice.

Guilliman reached out. The meditation chamber was small enough for him to be able to touch the door mechanism without taking a step. His fingers brushed a blank steel sheet. The embedded sensors recognised his unique energy signature, and the door swung open.

Guilliman stepped out of the room into his private chambers. A whole spire upon the Macragge’s Honour was his, as it had been long ago, for Guilliman’s quarters had been left practically untouched. This Gloriana-class battleship had been his flagship throughout the Great Crusade. At the beginning of the Heresy, he had ordered it to pursue the Infidus Imperator, the flagship of his traitor brother Lorgar. Guilliman had thought the Macragge’s Honour lost in this pursuit, but it was not, the battleship finally limping home long after the primarch had died. Upon its return, his quarters had been preserved as Guilliman had left them.

A Gloriana-class battleship was designed for a Legion of old, a formation a hundred times the size of a contemporary Space Marine Chapter’s thousand warriors. The official complement was hundreds of Adeptus Astartes, but it had been rare for so many to be aboard the Macragge’s Honour at once before Guilliman’s return. Under the reborn primarch, the Ultramarines flagship had again rung to the march of armoured superhumans as it had in ages past, but for the ten millennia before that, the halls of the Macragge’s Honour had been underused, and there had been no need to employ the primarch’s old chambers.

The Ultramarines ever were a practical breed, but sentimentality was in their make-up, and reverence added invisible locks to their father’s quarters. Not one of the Chapter Masters that followed Guilliman had ever taken up residence there, though they had every right to, and the primarch’s palace had become a shrine. Beyond ceremonies commemorating their primarch’s life, the rooms had remained sealed.

In the main, Guilliman’s palace had been carefully maintained, but entropy wormed its fingers into the complex’s fabric nonetheless, dulling metal and rotting cloth. Even now, refitted and occupied for the century of the Indomitus Crusade, Roboute Guilliman still caught the scent of neglect beneath the oily smell of ship’s air.

He passed through state rooms and down corridors whose doors opened on opulent guest chambers. This area was currently unoccupied, and he passed no one save for a scattering of maintenance servitors. His household servants had little business on these levels when he had no guests, and Guilliman demanded solitude when not attending to his many duties.

By grand staircase and express lift, he made his way to his arming chambers.