One week later, Leia was lying on her bunk, listening to her roommate's steady breathing. It was too hot on this planet to get into her Alliance sleep sack, so she was stretched out on top of it in the oversized uniform shirt that she used as a nightgown, sleepless. Luke was on night patrols all week, and she had barely left the Command Center in days. She had eaten dinner there tonight with Mon Mothma, going over preliminary plans for an Intelligence mission to Kuat while swallowing sticky mouthfuls of nutri-paste. Their work was advancing steadily. In fact, the Alliance was doing well: enlistment was up, cash and weapons had been coming in steadily, and they had made progress in their talks with tribal leaders on key planets in the Empire's raw materials supply chain. So why this restless energy?
On the empty fuel barrel that served as their bedside table, her datapad pinged with a message.
She'd been half-expecting it. Today was Han's last stop on the supply run before he made the long journey to the distant ice planet that would host their new base. The Alliance's encrypted channels were not to be used lightly – each transmission still carried the risk of interception from the Imperial probes spinning their webs in deep space, meaning the messages were to be kept short, infrequent, and as vague as possible. As such, Han was only to send her a confirmation message after completing each scheduled pick-up, upon his arrival on Hoth, and once he departed. He had been fairly diligent so far about sending his updates within a few hours of lifting off.
She reached an arm out and pulled her datapad into bed with her. Han's transmission signature glowed cheerfully on the screen.
"All quiet." he wrote.
"Thank you," Leia typed back, as had been her response to his previous three messages. Satisfied, she turned the datapad over besides her in bed. This check-in had been the last outstanding item on her day's agenda; it must have been the source of the night's nagging, unfinished feeling, she reasoned. Now everything was settled, and she could sleep.
The datapad pinged again.
"Always quiet without you on board."
She read the message twice, then hurriedly switched off the device and closed her eyes.
The next two weeks passed quietly. The Rebel contingent had been on the dwarf planet for a little over two months, and planned to stay for another two before moving on, barring Imperial interception. A blue rock orbiting Telos IV, itself a speck in the Kwymar Sector, it had enough gravity to permit physical fitness drills, and although the more senior members of High Command deemed themselves exempt from sweating with the recruits, Leia attended them rigorously. Not only did doing so help her maintain a closer connection to the soldiers, she was eager to train her body for combat. Feeling herself grow measurably stronger was comforting – her arms hardening and her legs propelling her faster and faster, these were tangible ways to promise herself that next time the Empire caught up with her, she would stand a better chance.
Tonight, Leia met Luke for dinner after the early evening drills. Both dripping in sweat, they arrived just in time for a special surprise: some of the mechanics had taken to hydroponics during their stay here, and they paraded in with their long-awaited results – several generous handfuls of beebleberries – to share with the second dinner shift. Each lucky diner could top their bowl of nutri-paste with one large, plump berry. There was an even split between those who preferred to eat the treat first, and those who saved it for last. Leia fell into the latter camp.
"Have you heard from Han?" Luke asked, slurping up his own beebleberry as they sat down to eat. This was usually the night they played cards aboard the Falcon.
"Not yet," Leia replied. She spooned up a glob of paste. "He should be arriving on Hoth tomorrow."
"I don't envy him," Luke said, "Or Chewie. That's a long flight."
"And it ends in a frozen wasteland. I told him to buy himself a real coat." Leia pictured Han in his usual black vest. He also owned a flight jacket, she knew, as well as three white shirts that all seemed to leave most of his chest exposed. "Don't worry," she added, "we'll update the uniforms closer to when the new base opens."
"I can't wait to see snow. Can you really make sculptures out of it?" Luke shook his head with wonder. "We used to make sand drawings as kids, but you can't shape it into anything without moisture."
Leia nodded wistfully as she ate, suddenly reminded of all the winters she'd spent complaining about the cold in Aldera. Telling her mother she couldn't wait for summer, couldn't stand the snow, had too much homework to accompany her on a frigid evening walk with the hounds. Nostalgia was perverse, she'd discovered recently. It gripped her now, insisting that she longed for frost-covered windows, that she missed the bone-deep freeze within the damp stone walls – taking things she'd never even liked, gilding them in Never Again and presenting them as cherished memories. It smeared the lens of recollection and left her stranded, the contours of her past life blurred so that eventually, it would be lost to her forever. The nutri-paste congealed in her mouth.
"Leia? Are you alright?" Luke asked, looking keenly into her eyes.
The spell broke. She swallowed.
"Yes, I'm fine," Leia said. "Just… thinking about snow. You'll like it." Luke nodded dubiously. She scraped the sides of her bowl clean and finally popped her beebleberry into her mouth. She smiled in earnest, savoring the burst of sweet, tart flavor after a very bland dinner. "And I'll let you know as soon as Han pings me," she added.
But two days passed, and she heard nothing. On the second evening, Leia found herself checking her datapad every few hours, even turning it off and back on again several times to rule out connection issues.
She considered sending Han a terse message to request an update – but each time she opened her messages, his last missive beamed up at her and her determination evaporated. It's his responsibility to keep us apprised of his progress, she argued with herself. I shouldn't have to chase him for information. So she held off. A minor delay wasn't cause for alarm; long-range space travel could be unpredictable even for the most seasoned pilots, especially when taking precautions to dodge Imperial patrols. Still, it wasn't like him. Han prided himself on the speed of his ship; he was reckless, but usually early.
Leia kept the datapad by her pillow that night, and zipped herself up in her sleep sack to ward off the planet's sudden chill.
"Updates on Hoth, Quartermaster Dara?" Mon Mothma inquired the following day.
"Nothing yet, Madam," Dara stood and replied dutifully. "It seems Solo is running late."
Mothma narrowed her eyes at the budgets.
"Could he have absconded with the materials?" General Dodonna asked, sitting forward in his chair. Leia felt a stab of irritation at his eagerness to jump to accusations, despite having stayed up most of the night thinking her own, unfriendly thoughts about the smuggler.
"Abscond with durasteel pylons and insulux sheets?" She couldn't help but snap, even though the question was ostensibly addressed to Dara. "What for? They are available for sale throughout the galaxy. He has very little to gain from doing so."
Dodonna's heavy brow furrowed at her tone. "I don't claim any expertise in the economics of the black market. Have you had any contact with him?"
"Not since he departed Bonadan sixteen days ago," Leia was forced to admit. Somehow the delay sounded worse, spoken aloud, and it jarred her into action. She turned to Mon Mothma. "I will send Solo a transmission if I don't hear from him by the end of the day."
"Very well," Mothma sighed. "Thank you, Quartermaster." Dara inclined his head stiffly and sat down.
General Rieekan kept his attention on his breakfast.
Leia's last shift came and went, and still no word from Han. She even sought out Dara in the corner of the hangar where he organized supplies, in case he had received any official communications from Hoth in the meantime. He hadn't, and neither of them could justify sending a transmission to the new base just yet; they were on strict orders to limit signals to the remote planet, lest they tip off the Empire about increased activity in the sector. Dara seemed peeved by her involvement, as though this were a problem the Princess had created with the express purpose of undermining him, and hurriedly sent her on her way. "I will inform Command as soon as Hoth contacts me," he sniffed, clearly torn between deference to her higher rank and petty exasperation, and erected a wall of rations boxes between them.
"Could something be wrong with our receivers?" Luke suggested later, when she relayed her concerns. She was walking him to his X-wing; the Rogue Squadron had been assigned another overnight scouting mission, investigating Imperial activity in the sector. The sleek line of spacecrafts awaited them at the end of the hangar, edged in the flickering starlight.
"It doesn't seem like it, we're receiving transmissions from our other outposts just fine," Leia hesitated. "Although none of them are in the Anoat sector. It really is very far away."
"That must be it," Luke assured her. "Han wouldn't abscond with building supplies. Dodonna's had it out for him ever since Han saved his neck from those TIE fighters off Bestine. Ignore him."
Leia nodded. Luke's blue eyes were serene, and he spoke with his usual calm conviction, an inner certainty more solid than optimism. She tried to absorb it from him with an impulsive hug. Though caught by surprise, Luke returned the embrace with enthusiasm, his warm arms tightening around Leia's shoulders for a few seconds – until she pulled away gracefully, feeling slightly abashed. "Fly safely," she said, and watched him climb into the cockpit. He waved goodbye as she retreated.
Once the fighters disappeared into the dark expanse of the night sky, she lingered by the hangar doors for a while, watching the stars glitter and thinking of lost pilots.
Luke's words lasted about an hour in her mind, but they weren't enough to stave off the disquiet that was firmly taking root. After seeing him off, she'd returned to the Command Center to sort through the day's last Intelligence reports, then she'd gone through the motions of her bedtime routine – all the while, her mind paced an increasingly tense circuit.
Now Leia was lying awake in bed once more. She'd already put off contact Han for hours longer than she'd intended. I'm giving him a chance to prove me wrong, she told herself. But her roommate was on night shifts this week, and the room was dead silent: alone in the dark, it became harder to rationalize inaction. Finally, illuminated only by the light of her screen, Leia gave in and tapped out a two-word message to Han's transponder.
Update, please?
As soon she sent it, she wondered if she was over-reacting. Was three days really cause for concern, if the journey itself took two weeks and he was instructed to keep his communications to a minimum? Knowing the state of Han's ship, anything could have happened, Leia reasoned, most likely minor. During the course of her missions with him, she'd seen the hyperdrive sputter, the air filtration systems spew Wookie hair back out from the vents, and the gravity sims crash precipitously. All of which the Falcon's equally temperamental captain would fix himself, within as little as half an hour or as long as four days. When it worked, the Millennium Falcon was a fearsome and exceptionally fast vessel. When things went wrong, the bucket of bolts seemed like more trouble than it was worth, although speaking this opinion out loud was a sure-fire way to get Han to blow up spectacularly and stay mad at her for hours.
Making a mental inventory of all the silly things that could be keeping him made her feel better. Han also knew spaceports in every sector of the galaxy, where pilots with the requisite credits could dock and work on their ships, no questions asked. And he'd left with plenty of cash on hand. She imagined him hanging upside down over the pipes in the engine pit, or elbow-deep in wiring, as she'd observed him countless times. In fact, when she pictured him in her mind's eye – sleeves rolled up, his forearms black or blue with engine grease or coolant, holding screws, cables, or a pair of pliers in his teeth – she could nearly smell the hot metal of the Falcon's core and the industrial grit soap he used to wash his hands afterwards.
That was comforting. Wherever he was, if he was doing repairs, he was fine, in his element. Leia placed her datapad firmly on the bedside table, face down, and commanded herself not to check it again until morning unless it woke her. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Soon, she found herself musing about the different space ports on Han's route from Bonadan to Hoth. He talked a lot about the merits of the different stations in each star system, although the ratings she'd once heard him explain to Luke tended to linger on the more tawdry details of the amenities. Gambling scene. Old friends with job opportunities. Tapcafs. Old friends, of the female taxonomy, who could be found at said tapcafs.
Could he be caught up in any of that? Leia's eyes snapped open. Was he gambling, right now? Drunk in a tapcaf, leering at spacer girls, giving them the looks he gave her, but worse? Was that why he was late?
She twisted onto her side, away from the sliver of light that shone under the door. In the darkness, she tried to clear her mind of the unwanted images that flooded in: Han and all manners of imagined female counterparts, wrapped in his lap in a dim tavern booth or twined together in the crew cabin she knew too well. Losing track of hours – days? Would he shirk a job for something like that? A mission this vital to them? She knew he brought them back to his ship sometimes; she'd found an earring once when she'd napped on his bunk during a long trip, many months ago. It had poked her through the sheet. She imagined a glittering woman writhing in his bed, shaking all manners of jewels loose under his dazzled, blazing eyes.
The thought was intolerable. Leia bit her lip hard, shoving the visions back into the murky depths from which they'd surged. She closed her eyes and focused on the blackness, allowed it to erase any thoughts of Han's cabin. Stop it, she scolded herself. Imagining these possibilities wasn't helpful, or necessary. Nor was it any of her business how Han spent his evenings when he was away. She only cared that he was late.
They were counting on him, and he hadn't shown up.
The next morning, her roommate crept through the door just as Leia bolted upright, bursting out of sleep like a prisoner from a cell.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you!" The Zeltron yelped, holding her boots up in her hands as proof of her efforts. Her name was Sen, and she tended to tip-toe around the Princess regardless of the hour, in awe of the Leia's exploits on the Death Star, humbled by her insistence on being randomly assigned a bunk alongside the troops despite her royal pedigree.
"You didn't, don't worry. I woke up just now on my own," Leia reassured her, automatically reaching for her datapad. A flurry of notifications from the officers who ran the night shift awaited her – as well as several assignments from Mon Mothma, who naturally needed only four hours of sleep. She sorted through them hastily, until she reached the end of her messages. No reply from Han.
For a brief moment, still blinking herself awake, Leia stared at the screen uncomprehending. Six hours had passed, and she had never known Han to outright ignore her communications, no matter how acrimoniously they clashed. And they hadn't even been fighting this time.
Something was wrong.
Could he have absconded? The hateful thought jolted itself awake besides her like an unwelcome bedfellow, sucking the air out of the cramped quarters. The bed sagged under its weight. Well, could he? In the dreary morning light, was it so impossible? No response to a direct request? It would be a first, but then, Han was unpredictable. A criminal. Refused to enlist. Absconded, or…
Stop it.
Leia knew when to cut herself off. No jumping to conclusions, especially not the worst possible conclusion – the first rule of leadership, she had learned it at fourteen. What was it her father always said? That the only iron grip a ruler should exert was on themselves – and it was precisely in times like these, when unforeseen personal entanglements became a distraction, that they should turn that grip inwards. She wouldn't speculate. Not first thing in the morning, not on an empty stomach, not without the input of a council of trusted advisors. Her reasoning was clouded by emotion, that much was now evident; without lingering on that fact, she would report the situation to High Command and whatever had or hadn't happened, they would devise a plan of action together.
Dousing herself in cold resolve, Leia took a deep breath and forced herself back into the present. Gray room, apologetic roommate, insects buzzing outside her window. The Revolution. She swung herself out of bed and began pulling on her fatigues and uniform shirt.
"Did they keep you after your shift?" she asked Sen. Their waking hours hadn't overlapped all week.
Sen hesitated, watching Leia pin the braids she'd slept in against her head.
"Well…" She smoothed the inky hair at the top of her own, oblong skull, and tried to quell the smile that tugged at the corner of her lip. "No, the shift ended as usual. I stayed out with some… with one of the guys. You know. Just talking."
Leia gave her the warmest smile she could muster.
"That sounds nice." She slipped into her boots and paused in the center of the small room for a brief, vacant moment, then straightened up with purpose. "Sleep well," she told Sen amiably, and propelled herself through the door.
The canteen was always sparsely populated at breakfast; most Rebels, it seemed, preferred to grab all the extra sleep they could get in the mornings. They slurped down nutri-shakes as they hurried to their posts, or crunched on ration bars in the control stations.
Leia didn't mind the empty tables and chairs; she had another half hour to spare before the morning briefing, so nursed her cup of caf and willed herself to focus on the detailed scout report in front of her. Her eyes had tracked the same opening sentence four times, absorbing nothing, when General Rieekan marched stiffly over from the serving line and interrupted her solitary breakfast.
She looked up from her notes in frank surprise as the crisply uniformed figure came to a halt before her, wielding his bowl of gruel in one hand. The General normally flew a strict course in the canteen – a tight loop down the line and straight back out, to eat in his office or in the briefing room. The deviation felt portentous, and Leia instinctively steeled herself for an urgent piece news.
"Good morning, your Highness," he said with a sharp heel click.
"Good morning," she replied.
Then, as if they always chatted casually over breakfast, he politely inquired: "Have you had any update from Captain Solo?"
Leia gaped at him, her initial surprise now compounded. Rieekan never interacted with her outside of their official capacities. After the annihilation of their native planet, he had offered her a haunted, glassy-eyed bow, then retreated back into his cone of silence. They never spoke of Alderaan again. They had no command project in common, and he was not involved in supply missions. Why was he asking her about Han outside of the briefing room?
"No I haven't, General," she said warily. A tendril of ice suddenly shot through her chest. "Has something happened?"
Was he concerned? Several thoughts tumbled through her mind at once. Why the personal attention? Did the dour veteran – who spoke only in collectives, of enemies, allies, future generations, and who betrayed no special emotion towards any member of their rank – actually consider Han a friend? Leia remembered the smell of cigars on Han's jacket and his self-satisfied smirk. Typical, she thought. It would be just like Han to find common ground with a stone wall. Then she recalled what the Rogues had muttered about the General's instincts, finely honed through years of misfortune, and she felt her heart plummet. Bad Luck Rieekan. Did he sense danger?
They scrutinized each other for a moment.
"You said that you would contact him yesterday, your Highness," Rieekan finally reminded her. "No response?"
She pressed her lips together and shook her head.
"That is odd," he allowed. Her expression must have betrayed some inner turmoil, because his dark brows quivered imperceptibly, and he added:
"If he gives no sign of life by the end of the standard week, I'll instruct the Hoth unit to send out a patrol in their sector. We may also be able to spare a scout to retrace his route."
He spoke in his usual monotone, as though this wouldn't be a highly unusual use of Alliance resources. Leia struggled to conceal her amazement. "Very well," she said, before it occurred to her he wasn't asking her for permission.
But this seemed to satisfy Rieekan. He closed the conversation with a curt bow, and without another word, the General swiveled on his heel and sailed out of the canteen.
Leia watched him go, staring after him until well after he'd disappeared from sight, her mind reeling from the improbable conversation. Two months ago, she'd sat right here with Han, Luke, and the Rogues, arguing about the General's reputation. Han had used the opportunity to disparage the concept of military medals, jostling his long legs under the table so that they bumped her knees. Now Han was missing and the General was planning a search and recover mission. She felt leaden, in the thrall of an inexorable downwards force. Frozen in place, elbows on the table and breakfast forgotten, she didn't know how to set herself back in motion. She didn't want to examine these feelings. She didn't want to read her scout reports, prepare for the day, or set her mind to anything at all. All her responsibilities felt far away, like looking through the wrong end of a scope.
All she wanted was an answer.
Where is he?
A pair of Intelligence officers straggled into the canteen, chatting quietly as they blearily ladled mealgrain porridge into their bowls. One of them spotted her and waved good morning. She nodded back.
Enough.
The command came in her Royal voice. The voice that had shut down wheedling demands on the Senate floor. It came on cue, to deliver her from self-pity: this was the reality of war, it reminded her. Rebels disappeared all the time. Scouts blasted into space and never returned. She'd seen the Alliance's best X-wing pilots picked off one by one over Yavin. Her network of spies was a revolving door; trusted contacts disappeared without a trace, and protocol was to assume them compromised. She herself had escaped death a half-dozen times, but in all likelihood, her luck would run out one day. So would Luke's.
Han called them suicidal maniacs, your Royal doom squad, and clueless kids, rolling his eyes. As if running contraband under the Empire's nose was any wiser.
It was always going to end this way.
The two officers pulled chairs over to join the Princess at her table, and Leia fixed them with her most serene diplomatic veneer. She had been trained for this. Relentlessly trained, because it will be relentless, her father had promised.
"Good morning," she said as they sat down.