True Colors

Inside the Titan forge of Olympia.

On a catwalk above one of the production lines, Kelbo Hal leaned against the railing and looked down at the War Machine components being manufactured.

Countless living mechanical laborers who had undergone lobotomies worked desperately along the production line.

They worked without sleep or rest. From time to time, someone collapsed from neural overload or deteriorating components, then Servitors dragged them away. Any usable organs and parts were removed and installed into the next person sent into the Titan forge.

Kelbo watched it all without expression, his eyes utterly devoid of emotion.

By chance, he saw a frail child being led away by Servitors, chains pierced through the child's shoulder blades for accelerated maturation and modification. The child looked far too much like Quadrant.

As he watched the child disappear from sight, Kelbo suddenly recalled what Quadrant had said to him on Mount Olympus yesterday.

Those accusations that the Imperium exploited Martians.

Those slanderous words against The Emperor, spoken before the Custodes.

If Quadrant had not been poor with words, he would have accused Kelbo Hal not only of doing nothing, but of fanning the flames.

And rightly so.

The production quotas had not been issued by Imperial bureaucrats, but by Kelbo's Magi of Planning.

Once weapons and equipment had been delivered to the Imperium and a share set aside for the Skitarii, the rest belonged to him. The heavier the production quotas imposed by the Imperium, the more Kelbo Hal had to raise output by at least threefold. Otherwise, he would have no leverage to challenge the Imperium.

Yet none of it had any effect.

Kelbo knew very well that the weapons and equipment he had squeezed out of Mars over the years would not be of much help at this point in