Fiction Activity

Competition
[GJW XIII Phase I] Fiction - Multi-Objective Prompt
Textual submission

objective 2 lazy fiction
Hilgrif flipped through several random video feeds from the location of the explosion. A few of the feeds were damaged due to the explosion, but for the most part it was made to look like it was caused by someone loyal to the Iron Legion. Hilgrif spoke in a commanding voice as he called out, “Shroud, do you see any anomalies to disprove the fact that this was done by the Iron Legion?”

Shroud paused for a moment before turning to his Verpine master. “Master, looking at this footage I can see no way to disprove that this was the Iron Legion unless we can find some way to repair the damaged recordings. So Master, we need to find a way to gets these repaired in order to disprove it was the Iron Legion and prove the Collective was actually behind it.”

Hilgrif then turned to his droid and paused in thought for a moment and then turned back to the console and muttered to himself”Why does the Master give such menial tasks when I could be improving the hive?” Hilgrif recalled the debriefing he had reviewed before he began his task. It was using this information that he was to sift through the data that the previous teams had collected after landing on the planet. The data was from a local explosion that destroyed a part of a local city.

The Collective was accusing the Iron Forces of attacking the colony for their fanatic beliefs. But as the Iron Forces had given no such order for any bombings, Hilgrif was given the task of proving the accusations false. Hilgrif shook his head shaking the idle thoughts from his mind and turned his concentration back to the console in order to try piecing together the damaged video files. Hilgrif paused then tried to merge 3 video angles to try making a clearer image. Then with a little extra rendering, he was able to make out the figure who set the bomb was using a mechanical hand to set the bomb.

Hilgrif zoomed in to attempt to make out the hand model to see if it would match up to any models on record as a possible clue to who the bomb setter was. While the hand was being cross-referenced with any on file in the database, Hilgrif was able to piece a few more frames from the videos together from before the explosion. The frames showed 2 people in a speeder exiting the vehicle to check the building the bomb was being set in. When the bomber saw the people coming in the building, he quickly removed his blaster and shot the bomb to trigger it so as to have no witnesses.

Hilgrif swapped to outside video feeds to try to better identify who was in the speeder. The speeder was a security vehicle, and the people getting out of it were speaking. But before Hilgrif could run the clip through the lip reading software, the other monitor beeped saying it had found a match to the hand.

Before he could turn to the monitor Shroud confirmed what he saw,”It seems to be a Collective model previously salvaged from suicide units from the Collective.” Shroud paused then added “But this will not be enough proof as the Iron Forces uses some of these same hands.”

Hilgrif turned to double check the data on the hand and said “At least it’s better than nothing.” Then he tuned back to the video feed monitors to turn on the lip-syncing software. As the software worked, a translation ran along the bottom of the screen. He noticed as one of the security said “Oh look it’s one of those foreigners from the Collective. I wonder what he’s up to in this abandoned build——-.”

The explosion cut off the guards sentence.

Shroud then said “Master I think that is the evidence that is required.”

Hilgrif nodded. “I will transfer this data to the higher ups so they can sort this mess. Then I can go back to working on that battle droid.”