The Arcadia screamed.
Her bulkheads shook, her decks quaked, and her spirit howled in a chorus of steel and shadow. Black mist poured from the walls, choking the invaders, seeping into their augmetic lungs. Corridors twisted into mazes, paths turning back on themselves, Skitarii squads cut off and scattered. Doors slammed shut with the force of hammers, crushing servitors into sparks and gore.
The ship had tolerated enough. Now she hunted.
Arcadian sailors surged with her, striking like wolves from the mist. Cutlasses flashed, lasfire cracked, and the cries of vengeance filled the corridors. The Skitarii faltered, their discipline unraveling as machine-spirits raged against them, as every augmetic failed in unison, as their binary prayers turned to static.
"Drive them back!" Thomar roared, blood painting his axe. "They bleed like us! They die like us!"
A squad of Skitarii broke formation, trying to retreat down a side corridor. The Arcadia sealed the doors behind them, trapping them in darkness. A moment later, the walls themselves seemed to close in — and their screams echoed until silence returned.
Harlock fought at the front, saber sparking arcs of lightning through steel and flesh alike. His crimson eye burned, guiding every strike, every parry, every thrust. He cut through the invaders with brutal precision, his cloak torn, his uniform slick with blood — some of it his own, most of it not.
The Magos lay dead, the engine decks secured, but still Harlock pressed on, leading his people in one final push.
And then, at last, the tide broke.
The Mechanicus began to fall back. Their chants faltered into dissonant static, their formations crumbled, their faith shook. Zeal could not withstand a ship's hatred and a crew's fury united. The survivors fled to their boarding craft, dragging broken servitors and shattered Skitarii with them, leaving the shrine decks and engine halls slick with blood.
The Arcadia sealed her wounds behind them, bulkheads grinding closed with a finality that shook the ship. The mist thinned. The silence was deafening.
It was over.
Harlock lowered his saber, arcs fading from the blade. His crimson eye flickered, its glow dimming beneath the weight of exhaustion. Around him, his people wept, clung to one another, or sat in stunned silence amid the dead.
He walked the halls of his ship.
Every step was a wound. He passed men cradling the bodies of brothers, mothers weeping over children, sailors too numb to move as blood pooled at their boots. The shrine deck was a charnel house, its candles guttered, its icons scorched, its floor slick with sacrifice.
Engineers slumped against bulkheads, their faces blackened with plasma burns, their hands still clutching tools as if refusing to let go even in death. Civilians lay among them, old and young alike, cut down in the name of zeal.
The Arcadia had survived.
Her people had survived.
But survival had cost them dearly.
Harlock's jaw tightened as he passed, his crimson eye watching everything, memorizing every face, every loss, every scar. His cloak dragged through blood, his boots echoed on steel, and still he walked, silent among the weeping.
This was his home.
This was his failure.
This was his burden.
And ahead still waited Veynar — the Rogue Trader who had unleashed this war.
Harlock's hand tightened on his saber hilt. The final reckoning had not yet come.