The Gilded Ambition was a mausoleum. Its corridors, once gilded with wealth and banners of conquest, now stank of smoke and blood. The air was heavy with silence broken only by the groans of the dying.
Harlock moved through the ruin, his cloak dragging through ash and gore. Behind him came his men, weary but unbroken, their eyes hollow with exhaustion. They carried the wounded on stretchers fashioned from banners, their boots echoing off steel that no longer gleamed.
The vaults of the Ambition opened to them with little resistance. The ship's surviving officers, cowed by the sight of Harlock's crimson eye and the quiet menace of the Arcadia's shadow clinging to him, surrendered keys and codes without a word.
Inside the vaults lay the riches of dynasties. Thrones by the millions, xenos artifacts sealed in stasis fields, relics from the Great Crusade, rare ores and priceless jewels. Enough wealth to buy and sell entire worlds.
But Harlock's eye lingered not on the jewels or trinkets.
In a side chamber, upon a plinth of black marble, lay a simple weapon: a Laslock pistol. Its frame was plain, unadorned, its grip worn smooth by forgotten hands. Yet the aura of it was undeniable. He lifted it, and it hummed faintly, the power within greater than any standard pattern. Old. Unique. A weapon of hidden potential.
Harlock holstered it without ceremony. His cutlass was long gone. His saber served him now. But this pistol, unassuming as it was, would find its place at his side.
The spoils were gathered, but no voices were raised in triumph. Instead, the Arcadians prepared a ceremony.
On the ruined decks of the Arcadia herself, the dead were laid out beneath tattered banners. Candles flickered in broken alcoves, smoke curling to the dark ceiling. The people gathered in silence, every soul aboard present, from the youngest child to the oldest veteran.
Harlock stood at the front, cloak torn, his saber sheathed. His crimson eye glowed, casting its light upon the faces of his crew.
"We have bled," he said, his voice low but carrying through the hall. "We have lost mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. The price we pay is high. Too high. Yet we endure. Not for conquest. Not for glory. For each other. For Arcadia."
A solemn chant rose, the names of the dead spoken aloud, one by one. The ceremony stretched for hours. When the last name was read, silence fell once more.
Only then did the scavenging begin. Supplies, weapons, and relics were ferried from the Gilded Ambition to the Arcadia. What was once Veynar's dynasty now belonged to the survivors of Arcadia.
Across the Galaxy
The story spread faster than fire in dry fields. A Rogue Trader dynasty, ancient and powerful, brought low. A Mechanicus crusade beaten back. One ship, one man, standing against impossible odds — and winning.
Whispers carried to the void: the Skull Prow lives.
On hive worlds, dockside cantinas, and even among the halls of the Schola Progenium, tales spread of a crimson-eyed captain and his cursed vessel.
Some called him heretic.
Others called him savior.
All called him legend.
The High Lords of Terra took note. Most dismissed the tale as exaggeration. But one among them, an aged Lord of the Navis Nobilite, remembered old grudges against Veynar's line. When Harlock presented the stolen Writ of Trade, bloodstained but intact, the High Lord did not laugh nor condemn.
He signed it.
Thus Francis Harlock became more than a pirate. He became a Rogue Trader. By Imperial law, his ship was granted free reign beyond the borders of the Imperium, empowered to protect his people, to carve a path not of conquest but of freedom.
The Arcadia had survived.
And now, it was untouchable.