<div class="floatleft">(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XlBytuge0_4/T5CdLNGkecI/AAAAAAAADaw/ixZQFt9wYv4/s1600/The-Raid-Redemption-smoke-hallway-machetes.png)</div><br/>A data pad sat alone on the table.  The screen was black, non-reflective against the gray-blue expanse of the desk.  Impossibly thin like a razor the data pad almost seemed to meld into the furniture.  Along one side a light flickered to show life.  Simple red to catch the eye, to notify the user of messages stored.  Nestled atop the table of plasisteel, the scene was far more ominous than the dirty walls could attest.  Chairs of the same material and color were settled against the edges of the table to prepare for the meeting ahead.  Minds of law and disorder were tapped to bring together the people this room would summon.  A guiding hand thrust forward into the flame to take the most impure minerals in the hopes of crafting a weapon for the Emperor’s Law.<br/><br/>Such a room was nestled in the deepest recess of the Middle Hive.  A place set apart from the Underhive by virtue of being on the right side of the great doors that could cut one section off from the other.  At one time the apartment complexes, shops and streets were flooded with poor factory workers and those that eked out a life serving them.  Never a place of luxury, The Slums was seen as at least a tolerable and necessary stain on Hive Subrique.  Crafted of rock and mineral deposits salvaged from the Hive bottom and wasted from factories the landscape was a patchwork of teetering buildings and cave like complexes.  Once a horde of workers had lived here, but The Great Tithing had changed all that.  Now the landscape was nearly abandoned, reserved for only the boldest of criminals and the least twisted of mutants.<br/><br/>Along the streets stumbled weary workers, forced to work shifts in excess of their ability.  Bleary eyes stared near blind of exhaustion as they struggled to produce the exports needed to keep the Emperor’s favor.  Criminals that shared no such obligation stalked the darker alleyways, knives and malicious smiles their weapons against those that dared to keep their obligations.  A few lights shined from bars and clubs, giving hope and meaning to the dreary remains of the hive-city.  Yet their noise was only a small stay against the bleak future of Subrique.  Even in the apartment complex that the datapad now called home the dregs of society remained.  The scent of urine soaking the creaking boards of plastic and stone.  Doorways had been kicked in on some floors, evidence of a recent raid while other doors showed evidence of being boarded up from the inside.<br/><br/>Somewhere out in the dim corners of this place wasted blight gunfire echoed.  From inside the room though nothing stirred.  Only the light flickered to signal a message, to signal a command for those that would soon find their way.<br/>