The Arcadia was quiet as she drifted free of the ruined raider ship. Harlock walked her halls with the saber at his hip and the faint sting of cauterized flesh still fresh beneath his patch. His cloak trailed the deck like a shadow, and men stepped aside as he passed.
He was used to silence. The crew had always treated him with a mix of respect and fear. But this silence was different. It carried weight.
He paused in the gallery that overlooked the gun decks. Below, void-born crew worked by the orange glow of lumen-strips, repairing scorched plating and hauling munitions back into storage. Their voices carried upward through the grated floors.
Harlock did not mean to eavesdrop, but the words caught him like a blade.
"They're saying he's more ghost than man now," one muttered. "That eye — Throne help us — it burned crimson when he fought."
Another scoffed, though his voice trembled. "And why not? The Arcadia gave it to him, didn't she? She gives us breath when air fails, she heals our wounds, she hides us in her mists. Why wouldn't she give her Captain more?"
A third voice spoke softly, almost reverently: "We're not just crew anymore. We're Arcadians. My mother birthed me on this deck, and hers before her. My boy will be born here too. This ship is our world. And he's the ghost that guides it."
There was a murmur of agreement. Then silence, broken only by the hum of the great engines.
Harlock turned away, his cloak whispering against the steel. He walked on, his boots ringing against the deckplates.
So this was what his people thought now. Not men of House Harlock, not servants of Arcadia the world, but Arcadians of the ship. A people born of steel and shadow, bound to him as much as to the vessel.
He should have felt pride. Perhaps even triumph. But what he felt instead was the cold weight of inevitability.
They would outlive him, generations upon generations. Unless… unless what had bound him to the ship bound him to eternity as well. And if so, then they would never let him go.
Later, standing at the helm, his hand on the great wheel, he stared into the void beyond the prow.
The crimson sight flickered beneath his patch, unbidden. For a moment, he thought he saw them — the future Arcadians, born and unborn, their lives woven through the ship's endless corridors, their names etched into steel. A people that would live and die beneath his shadow.
He tightened his grip on the helm.
"Very well," he murmured to the silence. "If fate itself would bind me to this ship, then I'll not bow to it. I'll master it. For them."
The Arcadia's engines rumbled in answer, the mists curling along her hull like the breath of a living thing.