Authors Note: About a year ago, I posted my foray into fanfiction, Soldiers. It was... mediocre, but suffered from me rushing chapters and not caring enough. I stopped after four chapters, but I kept thinking about the story. I realized that, despite its faults, I liked the idea of Soldiers. So, bored one day, I started to rewrite the first chapter. Welcome to Soldiers Redux (because redux makes things sound cool).
James woke on the cold steel block he was given as a bed. He stretched, his back in pain from the hard bed, and looked around at the mostly empty beds around him. He put on a coat over his shirt, and checked the clock. 0412. He stood up, rubbed his eyes, and made his way to the mess hall.
The mess hall was loud and excited. This was to be expected, as the soldiers based on Yavin were being transferred to the base at Hoth. This was only a few days after a number of them participated in the destruction of the Death Star. The soldiers at Hoth were starved for details, partially due to their limited communications with other bases. James fought through the crowd to the food servers and received his breakfast of cold, green scrambled eggs, stale, almost frozen meat of some sort, and water. He caught the eye of one of his comrades, and made his way to their table.
"James! Where the hell were you? The alarm rang 10 minutes ago!" one of the men, a young, pale man named Kyle said.
"Asleep. I doubt I kept anyone waiting." He set his tray down on the table and took a seat.
"Yeah, but ever since the battle of Yavin, Thompson has been getting on our backs about being efficient," the other soldier said.
"Well, Dan, you can tell Thompson to suck it. Having anyone wake up before 6 should be outlawed. Besides, the returners are enough of a distraction for me to sneak in," James responded.
Dan sighed and went back to eating his food.
They sat, eating their rations quietly until someone came up to them.
"You guys are awful quiet," he said
"Charles! How's our little war hero doing?" James asked.
"Stop, you flatter me," Charles said, obviously happy for the attention. "I barely got to do anything. Skywalker and his friends stole all the action."
"You still got to do more than us! We never get to do anything," James complained.
"What about your mission to Kazbar," Charles asked sitting down and stealing one of Kyles' strips of bacon.
"Please, I was a glorified mailmen. There weren't even any stormtroopers along the way to make it difficult!"
"Still, you got to leave this hellhole," Dan muttered, finishing of his plate.
"Did you guys see the medal ceremony?" Charles asked.
"We can't even make calls here, let alone watch video. Who'd they give medals to?" Dan responded, loudly. Maybe a little to loudly as a few nearby troops looked at him oddly.
"Skywalker and his folks," Charles quietly responded, glaring at Dan.
"Figures. I swear these four random people show up out of nowhere, and steal all of the credit. It's stupid," Kyle briskly responded. The others sat silently for a bit eating their food. A loud siren started to ring and a voice over the intercom said "All flight units please report to the hangar." The soldiers stood up, dumped their food in the trash cans, and made their way down the halls.