A.N. : This is a short story that I wrote in 8th grade for Creative Writing class. It's about that stormtrooper Han Solo kills when he runs into a large crowd of them on the Death Star. I've reformatted it from its first publication since the spacing was so bad it was almost unreadable. Enjoy!
Gary Ferguson, lowly trooper of the Imperial Army, was elated that today was his last day as a mistreated underling serving aboard the Death Star. Before he enlisted, back on his rural home planet Gary thought that joining the galactic military meant blasting treacherous rebels and riding cool ships off into deep space. He soon learned he was wrong.
He first figured out that there was no hope of career advancement because of paranoid and greedy officials, who desperately wanted to keep their jobs and refused to promote anyone who didn't pay an enormous amount of credits. Then he realized that his real work was tedious, unsatisfying, and boring. Since the Death Star was a secure military fortress, the only jobs for poor Gary were endless marching and cleaning out the trash compactor. That's not to say his job was safe. Last week one of his squadmates was thrown down a reactor shaft by a black-masked, asthmatic superior just because he spoke up about the substandard military rations. Since he failed to read the fine print, Gary Ferguson had slaved away at his meaningless job alongside thousands of other faceless goons for 5 years. This day was different, though.
Gary had heard that a motley crew of rebel scum and riffraff had somehow snuck on board the mighty Death Star. "Why should I care?", he thought to himself, "It's the last day before I call it quits." Then heard that his superiors were offering a huge sum of money for the deaths of just one of the several infiltrators on the moon-sized ship. "This'll set me up for life", Gary greedily thought to himself. He planned to buy a small island somewhere in deep space and retire young. Little did he know that the only way he was leaving the Death Star was in a pine box.
Gary Ferguson loaded his unused blaster rifle and shuffled into his platoon's square formation of about 40 men. They had been pointlessly marching in place in the center docking bay for about 10 minutes when he first heard the first sounds of a scuffle. He turned his head and saw about 5 or 6 men come running through a pair of blast doors. They quickly disappeared into the seething crowd of troops who had just begun to draw their weapons. Gary saw his chance at fortune and pushed his way past several rows of men to the front. The instant he reached the very front of the mob, a greasy lowlife in a cheap black vest followed by some sort of hairy man-dog emerged from behind the blast doors. Gary was the quickest on the draw, honed by years of practice of raising weapons in a salute. But Gary had never even fired his gun, and so the rusty and never-used weapon jammed. A half-second later, the scoundrel fired his own weapon, and the laser bolt burned itself into the center of his chest. Gary Ferguson was dead before he hit the ground.