Arbitrator Smith was having the usual boring day.  He was out on his daily 8 hour duty watching the battlements.  He had heard about all these incursions.  "Fething hive scum slaughtering each other again.  Who gives a shit?" he thought.<br/><br/>Arbitrator Jones was back from another tour cleaning out the hive riots.  "Who cares about these hive idiots? Let them kill each other off and let's  be done with it," he settled in for some shuteye.  He thought his day was over...<br/><br/>Judge Wilkins was in his office.  He was tired and the recaff wasn't having the desired effect.  He had been up for 3 days straight dealing cleaning up the mess the hive cultists were creating.  He hated this part of the job, but he was stationed right at ground zero.  He sipped a cup of black recaff.  "Ughhh..." he groaned and then spiked it with some amasec before taking some more.  He had been hitting the bottle particularly hard lately and it had made him much more lax in his duties and it had hit the morale of his inferiors hard.  "Emperor protect me...I hate this fethin' job." He continued to grumble.  Lord Parlow had left that toady Smithers in charge.  In his infinite wisdom, he had been sending out nearly all the Arbitrators in the hive to each spot only to have them redeploy to another spot when an attack hit elsewhere.  Smithers would brook no opposition to the unsoundness of his planning.  "Smithers...Emperor take him...," he grumbled.  Smithers was leaving skeleton postings everywhere instead of adapting to changing conditions, as is the usual procedure.  However, his authority was superceding common sense in this case and every Arbite must obey his superior as if he were the Emperor himself.  This left his 2 remaining Arbites and himself to guard the outpost, which held many armaments for riot control.  Smithers had chosen to ignore his protests about how underprotected the outpost had become.  "Everything will be fine," he said in complete ignorance.  "No everything will NOT be fine..." he muttered.  He did not know how right he was about to be.<br/><br/>