Y'know, while writing this chapter, I realized what a monumental difference a good night's sleep and a morning hike can make in the writing process. The creative juices were just flowin' for this chapter, and now I've cranked out more than 5,000 words! In two days!
Anyways, here we are. The last chapter of The Empire Strikes Back. I don't have anything plotted out for the next two parts yet, so don't expect any updates for quite some time. I need to do a whole lot of prep, first.
Anyway, enjoy!
Here he was.
Igniting his own lightsaber, Luke watched as the sky-blue blade illuminated his side of the dimly-lit room, contrasting against the aggressive red glow of Darth Vader's weapon. Discarding his useless blaster, he slowly walked up the stairs to confront the dark lord.
"The force is with you, young Skywalker," Vader's deep voice announced. "But you are not a Jedi yet."
He didn't bother to respond. Reaching the top of the stairs, Luke entered a fighting stance and waited to strike. Both sides were only a few feet away from each other, the tips of their sabers almost connecting.
Calm. Prepared. Focused.
He lunged, swinging the lightsaber in a tight arc. Both weapons clashed against each other, sparking and sizzling with intense energy. Both sides delivered a quick chain of strikes and parries, neither of them breaking the other's defense.
Both of them suddenly detached from the fight, testing each others' skill. As he waited, Luke got the distinct feeling that Vader was going easy on him. Underestimating him.
Well, he'd show him otherwise.
Once again, sabers clashed as Luke and Vader moved back and forth, spinning and striking and dodging. The battle of the ages was on.
Elsewhere, an orange feline was making his way through the winding maze of hallways, following the voice of an imperial ordering around his men… and his prisoners.
Hobbes had been following the squadron of Cloud City guards and Imperial Stormtroopers for a while now, with R2 right behind him. The droid was, thankfully, being more aware of any noise he was making that could give them away. Hobbes had only gotten glimpses of Leia and the others, but it seemed like the Mandalorian bounty hunter from earlier was gone.
So far, he had gone unnoticed, which meant that his best course of action to free his friends was to ambush the escort. With a few well-placed shots, he could hopefully down most of the guards and soldiers. The remaining few he could carefully mop up with a pounce or more fire from his carbine.
He grinned as he crept after his prey. He had the element of surprise.
And what followed was what could surely only be God's twisted idea of a practical joke.
Suddenly, a door on the side of the hallway he was in opened, and out came (you guessed it!) a stormtrooper, about to head in the direction of Leia and the others. As he walked he glanced at Hobbes, took another step toward his destination, before realization must have struck him. He whirled, bringing up his blaster rifle as fast as he could, but a quick shot from Hobbes' carbine caught him in the cranium and caused him to crash to the ground.
"Rebel! Fire!" the imperial officer's shrill order pierced through the air, and the next second, blaster bolts were flying toward him. Twisting, he ducked behind a corner, scorching tibanna blowing off bits of the wall. Not wasting time, Hobbes got on his stomach and crawled to the edge of his cover. The troopers were focusing on where they thought he would be- at eye level, not on the ground.
Taking a deep breath, he lunged forward just out of cover, leveled his carbine, and fired.
Blaster bolts hit the troopers' knees and legs, bringing them crashing down as screams of pain reverberated through the hallway. In a flash, Hobbes rolled back into cover as the other ten (ten!) troopers switched their aim to where he was.
Taking a few breaths to regain his bearings, Hobbes prepared to go on the attack once again. The other Cloud City guards were probably taking Leia, Chewie, and 3po the rest of the way while these troopers held him up, so he had to work fast. But how to kill them without getting shot himself?
Sending a few shots the troopers' way to ward them off for the moment, Hobbes' eyes suddenly noticed something. A computer terminal, like the one from earlier, but here was one that R2 could actually use.
"R2!" he exclaimed. "Connect with that terminal and find a way to turn off the lights in this hallway! Shut the doors at each end, too!"
The droid beeped in the affirmative, and extended a robotic arm to do just that. While R2 worked, Hobbes did his best to hold off the troopers, catching one in the arm with a blaster bolt. But soon, the imperials would reach the corner.
"C'mon, R2!" he urged.
Suddenly, the astromech beeped and the lights illuminating the pristine corridors around them darkened to nothing. At exactly the same time, the doors on both ends of the hallways he and the troopers were in closed, preventing outside light from getting in.
He grinned, baring his fangs. Now he had the upper hand.
Slowly, the troopers moved forward, barely able to see anything with their helmets' weak night vision. Wary, they advanced with nary a sound, ready to shoot anything that moved. Closer and closer to Hobbes' ambush point they came, until-
A red blast suddenly lit up the pitch black corridor and the foremost trooper went down. With peregrine speed, Hobbes caught the second trooper by the arm and used the momentum to spin himself around, his other arm holding his carbine which gunned down the other imperials. Diving to the ground along with the first few troopers' corpses, the remaining ones in the back accidentally shot at the trooper whose momentum Hobbes had just used to swing around.
For a brief second, silence fell over the battlefield.
Then, without warning, the form of a tiger sprang up from the ground, catching the next soldier's blaster before it could fire. Grabbing the entire man by the arms, he then threw him at his comrades and knocked them down. Stepping over corpses, he snapped up his blaster and shot into the dazed troopers' bodies.
Immediately afterwards, a blaster bolt caught him from behind, causing him to yell in pain and leaving a smoking patch of fur on his upper back. Twisting Hobbes shot at the trooper responsible, making sure that this time he was truly dead.
"Yaaaaagh!"
Suddenly, a ghostly form slammed into him, sending them both sprawling to the ground. As the trooper tried to keep him pinned down, Hobbes saw his friend up ahead about to fire at him. Twisting, he managed to shift just in time and instead the blast punched a hole through the armor of the trooper that had tackled him. Doing his best to aim with one hand, Hobbes squeezed the trigger and the trooper that had shot went down.
Then, snarling and growling, Hobbes broke the hold the last trooper had on him, got to his feet, and with all the strength he could muster, flipped the man over his head and threw him to the ground. The cracking of bones told him that the move had worked.
Breathing heavily, Hobbes grabbed his carbine off of the floor, aimed at the wriggling, cursing trooper's head, and pulled the trigger.
"R2!" he rasped. "Lights!"
A few seconds passed before R2 could reactivate the power. But once he did and scooted over to Hobbes, he must have been met with a terrifying sight.
The hallway was littered with corpses riddled with smoking holes, broken bones and cracked armor. Rivulets of blood poured from some of them, creating puddles on the ground. The lights, still trying to regain power, flickered on and off.
And at the far end, breathing so heavily it was almost growling was Hobbes, his carbine hanging limply from his arm. His fur was mussed up badly. A patch of fur was smoking from the blast that he had endured, and drops of blood dotted his paws. R2 beeped slightly.
Looking back, Hobbes realized what he must be looking like right now, and tried to calm himself down. "Sorry. sorry," he breathed. "I, uh… we should get going."
Stepping to the door controls, Hobbes waited as R2 accessed another terminal. Leveling his carbine once more, he prepared to fight his way to Leia and the others. The door opened, Hobbes put a finger on the trigger, and-
A series of shots suddenly downed the imperial troopers waiting on the other side. Startled, he watched as their bodies fell to the ground. The next second, Cloud City guards were pointing blasters at him, about to gun him down.
"No! Don't shoot him!" a man's voice ordered.
What the-
"Hobbes!" Leia's voice came from somewhere near him. Looking over, he was elated to find Leia, Chewie, and 3po all standing close to where he was.
"Guys!" he exclaimed as the guards around him lowered their blasters. "Are you all alright?"
"That remains to be seen," Leia muttered as the man who had spoken earlier walked up to her. He was stylish, sporting a golden-blue cape and a light blue shirt that fit well with his dark blue pants. His black hair sat like a confident crown atop his head- the same color as his mustache. As Hobbes watched, the man unclasped the bindings on Chewie's hands and told his guards to hide the troopers' bodies somewhere.
"What do you think you're doing, Lando?" Leia asked, hatred in her words.
"We're getting out of here," the man, Lando, responded.
"Oh, I knew all along that it had to be a mistake!" 3po cheerily remarked.
Immediately after having been freed, however, Chewie suddenly turned on Lando, grabbing him by the neck and hoisting him up against the wall. Immediately, the guards around them raised their weapons, but Lando held up a hand as best as he could to tell them not to fire.
"Do you think that after what you did to Han and Calvin we're going to trust you?" Leia asked him.
"I had no choice…" Lando choked out.
"What are you doing?!" 3po wailed. "Trust him! Trust him!"
"Oh, so we understand, don't we, Chewie? He had no choice," Leia scoffed.
"I-I'm just… trying to… help!" Lando forced out.
"We don't need any of your help!" Leia yelled. The guards around them began to uncertainly raise their blasters again.
"Alright, alright!" Hobbes suddenly broke in, confused and annoyed. "Chewie, let the mustache man go. Now!"
Reluctantly, Chewie did. Gulping in air, Lando wheezed out a "Thank you."
"Okay, Leia," he asked her. "What is going on, here?"
"This backstabbing traitor here-" she pointed to Lando- "turned us over to the Empire and froze Calvin and Han in Carbonite! And now, he's telling us that he wants to help us 'escape.'"
"What?" Hobbes asked in a dangerously low voice. "What?!"
Picking Lando up by the throat, he slammed him against the wall with considerable force, his anger aroused. "You were the one that froze them?! You trapped my best friend?!"
"No-" Lando choked. "You can still… save them!"
Hobbes' grip on the man lessened, and he let him drop to the ground. Still infuriated, he asked, "Where are they?"
"At the East Platform…" he gasped. "They're about to be transported to Jabba the Hutt's palace by Boba Fett!"
Boba Fett! The name was one the Hobbes recognized immediately. A Mandolorian clad in impervious armor, said to carry ten different ways to kill someone on his person at all times. In a nutshell, the most successful Bounty Hunter in the outer- and middle rim of the Galaxy.
"Well, what the heck are we standing around for?" Hobbes asked. "C'mon! Let's get to them before they're gone forever!"
The words galvanized the group, and Leia, Chewie, 3po, R2 and Lando followed. They moved through the hallways, relying on Lando to show them the way.
"R2! R2!" 3po's voice came from Chewie's back. "Wherever have you been? Come on, keep up!"
In response, the stubby droid beeped an agitated response.
"Well, at least you're still in one piece! Look what happened to me!"
A minute later, the door to platform nine opened, and Hobbes raced out, ready to engage any adversary he found.
But no one was on the platform.
A whooshing noise, however, made him look up, and to his shock he saw the Slave One, Boba Fett's ship, speeding away from the city and heading into the stars. And on that ship were Calvin and Han.
"NO!" he cried out, snapping up his blaster and sending a few desperate shots after the ship. "No!..."
Behind him, he heard the sound of footsteps as everyone else caught up. His carbine fell out of his paw, and he numbly dropped to his knees. Water formed in the rims of his eyes. And as the fact that he had just lost two of his greatest friends hit him full force, he didn't bother to hide his sobbing.
"No!" he choked, his face unbearably warm. Tears dripped down from his nose, his fur, his whiskers. "He was the- the best friend I could have ever asked… for."
Beside him, Chewie let out a loud wail, crying out to his captain as Leia just looked quietly on. Hobbes wasn't the only one who had just lost someone dear.
"Oh, no! Chewie, they're behind you!"
Everyone whirled at 3po's warning as a deadly blaster bolt narrowly missed Leia, who yelped in surprise. Behind them, stormtroopers were slowly gathering in the room leading out to the landing platform.
"RAAGH!" Hobbes roared. His eyes were black as obsidian, shining from his tears. Engraved with primal fury. The empire did this. The empire took his best friend from him- encased him in an unbreakable tomb, and they were going to die.
All of them.
And he wasn't the only one mad. Beside him, Chewie, Leia, and Lando cut loose with blasters. Peppered with unbearable gunfire, the troopers retreated into cover. Unrelenting, Hobbes led the entire group back inside, firing at anything and everything that moved.
"Get to the elevator!" Lando told them, pointing at an entrance nearby. "C'mon!"
Hobbes barely heard Lando- he was firing and moving and dodging blaster ammunition as he squeezed that damned trigger over and over. Beside him, Leia and Chewie did the same, tearing the walls- and troopers- down with smoking craters across their surfaces.
"C'mon!" Lando grabbed Leia by the arm, dragging her off to safety.
Suddenly, a blast zipped through the air, striking Hobbes' knee and causing him to stumble. A second blast singed off fur on the side of his ribs, and, realizing that he was going to die if he stayed there, he desperately threw himself toward the elevator.
A final blaster bolt hit the side of his leg as he landed, and he cried out in anguish. Suddenly, two strong arms reached down, picking him up, and dragged him into the elevator, the door closed just as the troopers reached it, and Hobbes let out a sigh.
"Aaagh!" he grimaced. "Oh, jeez- it hurts!"
"Chewie, help get him to the Falcon," he heard Leia say, and then he felt the Wookie grab him, pick him up, and put his back on his feet… or rather, foot. The next second, the door opened again, and Hobbes did his best to move along, his left leg unable to move without incredible pain coursing through it.
"This way! There's the landing pad!" Lando pointed. Noticing that the door was locked tight, he put in a series of digits into a keypad. Steeping back, he was only greeted with a red light and a buzzing sound. After a few tries he turned, panicked. "The security code has been changed!"
"Stormtroopers!" Hobbes rasped, bringing up his blaster. Leia, Lando, and Chewie did the same as they all figured a way out of this predicament.
"R2, you can tell the computer to override the security system!" 3po realized, pointing at a computer terminal in the adjacent wall. Beeping, R2 scooted over to it, and tried to connect with the city's network.
"BrrzAp!" The astromech flew back with a robotic shriek, electricity sparking and crackling across his metal surface. Shaking his head, Chewie momentarily stopped his firing, having found the problem, and pulled R2 over to a different interface. Beeping a series of angry phrases at 3po, he connected with the actual computer terminal.
"Well, don't blame me," 3po argued. "I'm an interpreter. I'm not supposed to know a power socket from a computer terminal!"
"Attention," Lando said, speaking into a mic that must have been connected to the city's intercom system. "This is Lando Calrissian. The Empire has taken control of the city. I advise everyone to leave before more Imperial troops arrive."
Replacing the mic, Lando started in surprise as the door to the landing pad slid open right by him. Wasting no time, he rushed out, shooting at the troopers with his blaster pistol. The group pushed through the panicked crowd of citizens, making their way to the landing pad before finally reaching the last door. Beeping, R2 connected with the interface, saying something that Hobbes couldn't translate.
"What are you talking about?" 3po asked, annoyed. "We're not interested in the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon. It's fixed! Just open the door, you stupid lump!"
After a few deft twists and rotations by R2, the door opened and everyone quickly rushed out of the cramped and shot up hallway.
"Oh, I never doubted you for a second! Wonderful!" 3po cheered.
Turning, R2 released a great cloud of smoke, fogging up the hallway and blinding the troopers. With ample cover, the group raced out onto the platform, and Lando opened the Millennium Falcon's ramp.
"Get in!" he shouted as blaster bolts pinged off of the ship. As soon as everyone had gotten on board, he followed, the last one to get on, and closed the ramp. Racing to the cockpit, he strapped in along with Chewie and the two of them booted up the ship's freshly repaired systems. Outside, the stormtroopers ducked and dove to the ground as the Falcon's collapsible turret laid waste to them. The next second, the entire ship had lifted off and was speeding away, into the darkening tibanna clouds.
Inside of the cockpit, everyone had gathered together, Leia tending to Hobbes' smoking patches of fur and charred blood and Lando and Chewie steering the ship.
"Hold still," she said, applying Bacta salve to his wounds. "You'll make it worse."
Hobbes did as she requested, burying the pain and instead focusing on other things. Despite her calm face as she patched him up, he could see tear stains on her cheeks. Her face was sullen. Devoid of emotion, and he knew that it was because of Han.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled.
She looked at him. "For what?"
"For Han."
She hung her head, sighing, and went back to bandaging the fried skin on his legs and back.
Looking out at the atmosphere, Hobbes noticed that they would be flying out and away in a few minutes, the color of twilight appearing around them. Then, he noticed something else.
"Leia? You okay?" he asked her. She had stopped tending to him and now wore an expression of deep thought. Of confusion, almost.
"Luke,' she whispered.
A jolt went through Hobbes as he realized that throughout trying to find Leia and the others, throughout the wild hurricane of emotions and rage that he had felt, throughout the escape to the Falcon, he hadn't once thought about Luke!
He's still in there! With Vader!
Horrified with himself, Hobbes looked up as Leia spoke again, this time louder.
"Luke… we've got to go back."
"What?" Lando asked. Chewie growled in surprise.
"I know where Luke is," she told them.
"But what about those fighters?" Lando asked, indicating several triangular dots on the scanner screen. TIE Interceptors.
"Chewie, just do it," she ordered the Wookie.
"But what about Vader?" Lando argued. At the question, both Chewie and Hobbes looked over at Lando, growling slightly.
"All right, all right, all right."
In a graceful arc, the Falcon turned around, and headed straight for Cloud City, now the belly of the beast. As they neared the city, hundreds of ships all around them were fleeing, rushing to get away before the Empire locked them down. It quickly became apparent that they were in a race against time; the TIE Interceptors were moving in fast, and if they didn't find Luke before then, stuff would go down.
Then, as Hobbes could literally see the fighters closing in in the distance, Lando looked up, having noticed something. "Look, someone's up there."
Everyone looked up at the weather vane above them, hanging down from the bottommost part of Cloud City.
"It's Luke!" Leia shouted. "Chewie, slow down. Slow down and we'll get under him. Lando, open the top hatch!"
"The fighters are almost in range," Lando told them as he rushed to open the hatch.
"I can man the gun," Hobbes told them. "R2, help me over to it."
R2 obliged, letting Hobbes prop his arm onto him as he stumbled to the Falcon's laser cannon. Climbing up the ladder, he lowered himself into the seat and strapped in. The next second, flak from the fighters rocked the ship.
"C'mon! Get Luke inside!" Hobbes goaded, speaking into the commlink by the gun.
"He's in!" came Lando's voice. "Chewie, get going!"
Spinning the turret, Hobbes pressed the firing triggers and a steady trail of scorching cannonfire scattered the incoming TIEs. As the ship flew off into the sky, Hobbes did his best to keep them away. But he wasn't Calvin.
"Boom!" A blast separated the upper-right wing of one Interceptor, and the ship careened out of control, down into the depths of the Gas Giant's crushing atmosphere. Then, he spied something out of the corner of his eye.
"Hey, uh, there's a Star Destroyer heading straight for us," he warned, right before an explosion rocked the ship.
"Alright, Chewie," Lando said. "Ready for lightspeed."
"If your people fixed the Hyperdrive," Leia added. Another blast sent a tremor through the ship. "All the coordinates are set. It's now or never."
"Punch it, Chewie!" Lando exclaimed, and Hobbes eagerly awaited the nauseating feeling of entering Hyperspace. Surprising for him. Even from his elevated position, he could hear the sound of the ion thrusters warming up- the spinning and whirring of electrical components, and finally!...
"..."
"..."
Another hollow boom shook the ship, and it was then that hobbes realized that they weren't in Hyperspace at all.
"RAAARGH!" Chewie growled.
"They told me they fixed it. I trusted them to fix it," Lando whined. "It's not my fault!"
"Oh, god, oh god ohgod," Hobbes muttered, terrified.
Meanwhile, on the bridge of the Executor, Vader looked out at the small Rebel ship, dozens of fighters chasing after it.
"They'll be in range of our tractor beam in moments, my lord," Admiral Piett said, standing beside him.
"Did your men deactivate the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon?" Vader asked. The admiral answered in the affirmative.
"Good. Prepare the boarding party and set your weapons for stun," the dark lord ordered. His plan for Luke Skywalker to join him on the Dark Side had failed, and the feline rebel had escaped before he could freeze him in carbonite. But now it didn't matter. He'd have them either way… and the rest of the Rebels, too.
"Dang it, what's going on?" Hobbes asked, tentatively climbing down the ladder so as to not disturb his wounds. The flak and explosions all around them didn't help. "We're gonna get caught!"
"I don't know, Hobbes!" 3po whined, being worked on by R2, who was putting him back together. "Why can't we just go into lightspeed?"
A string of beeps came from R2.
"We can't? How would you know the hyperdrive is deactivated?... The city's central computer told you? R2-D2, you know better than to trust a strange computer- ouch! Pay attention to what you're doing!"
Inside of the floor, Chewie and Leia were desperately trying to find out the problem, shouting and panicking. A series of frustrated banging sounds came from inside.
"Father…" Luke's voice came from inside of the sleeping quarters.
What? Father?
Suddenly, R2 stopped his work on 3po, and turned to move somewhere.
"R2, come back at once!" 3po demanded. "You haven't finished with me yet! You don't know how to fix the hyperdrive."
In response, R2 beeped a defiant string of words, moving over to the Hyperdrive's terminal interface.
"Chewbacca can do it," 3po argued. "I'm standing here in pieces, and you're having delusions of grandeur!"
R2 stopped at an access panel right by the interface and opened it.
"R2, what are you doing? That's not the hyperdrive!" Hobbes exclaimed. He could already feel the star destroyer's tractor beam pulling the Falcon in. Another few seconds, and they would be caught. All of their pain and desperation for noth-
Suddenly, R2 connected two wires, and a force, almost as if they were being pulled by a magnet, propelled the ship forward. The mild shockwave slapped Hobbes in the back, making him lose his grip on the ladder.
"Gaaaah!" he cried out as he hit the ground, his wounds suffering the force of him falling on the metal floor. Spots dotted around in his vision as his pain receptors seemed to overload, and then everything went quiet. For what seemed like an hour, he lay there, breathing and clutching his back and leg in pain.
"Oh, R2! You did it!"
Realizing what just happened, Hobbes didn't move at first. Then, slowly a smile spread over his face as he let out a few childish giggles. Soon, however, they turned into full-blown laughter as he celebrated their escape. "R2, you clever little ocelot, you did it!" he chuckled. "WHOO!"
All around him, Leia and Chewie and even 3po were laughing, cheering as Lando came in in a similar mood.
"Well, I guess all that's left is to meet up with you Rebel fleet," Lando remarked. But to Hobbes' confusion, Leia stopped laughing.
"No," she shook her head. "I'm not going to repeat the same mistake twice. Chewie, take the ship to a secluded planet somewhere. We're going to check the entire Falcon for tracking devices.
"Ah," Hobbes nodded, grinning. Then he realized something. "Wait, what about Lando?"
"What about me?" Lando asked.
"You're not part of the Rebellion," he said. "That means that right now, you're sort of a security concern."
"Oh," Lando nodded.
"So, I guess there's two options," Leia said. "One, you join the Rebellion after we deem you trustworthy-"
"I'm trustworthy!"
"-or we drop you off on a planet somewhere and you can go do whatever," she finished.
"Well, I'm not exactly on good terms with the Empire, or anyone, for that matter…" Lando thought aloud. "Yeah, sure. I'll join your Rebellion, if you'll accept me."
"Not so fast," Leia shook her head. "There's still the matter of your betrayal and you freezing Calvin and Han in carbonite."
"I had no choice! And besides, if it weren't for me, none of us would have ever gotten off of the planet," Lando pointed out.
"Be that as it may, I'm going to put you through some trials before we accept you as a true fighter for the Rebellion," Leia told him.
"Fine by me," Lando nodded, when suddenly, an agitated moan came from the sleeping quarters.
"Luke!" Hobbes limped over to the doorway, and what he saw shocked him.
Luke was unconscious, lying in one of the bunk beds. His heart was steady and he had no signs of large wounds… except for one. Hobbes gasped when he realized that Luke's right hand was cleanly cut off. Burns formed a wall of charred blood that closed the wound, and Hobbes deducted that the cause must have been a lightsaber.
Darth Vader.
Whispering a silent prayer, Hobbes backed out of the room and went to the lounge for a bite to eat. Luke would recover, he knew that. And they were all on their way to safety… safety at last. But now he had a new mission.
A full day later, the Millenium Falcon had connected with the rest of the Rebel fleet at a pre-scheduled rendezvous point, and Hobbes was enjoying his first warm meal in weeks.
Crunching down on an oily and fried Sarcatcher from Mon Cala, he thought about how everyone was faring. Luke had recovered… somewhat and had gotten a prosthetic hand to replace the cut off stump that had been created after the confrontation of Darth Vader.
Vader won that round, but he would not win the war. Hobbes declared that much.
Next there was the immediate problem. Both Calvin and Han had been frozen in carbonite; perhaps Calvin had been extremely annoying, and Vader decided to chuck the six-year-old in with the smuggler. Now, Leia's- and Hobbes' primary priority was to find out how to save both of them and bring them back home.
Chewie had relayed Calvin's message to him before he was frozen: To go home without him. To find the Coaxium and leave him behind.
Not a chance in hell.
As he gulped down the last of his food, he already had a list to check off:
One, Recover and rearm.
Two, find the Coaxium needed for the DART.
Three, break Calvin and Han out of their carbonite shells.
And finally, four: go home.
His commlink suddenly beeped, and, answering it, he was greeted with a familiar voice. "Luke!" he grinned. "How are you holding up?"
"Good! Good," came the reply. "Hey, I heard about what happened… I'm sorry."
"It's alright," Hobbes sighed. "We'll have Calvin and Han back in no time. How's the new hand treating you?"
"I still need to get used to it."
"Thought as much," he chuckled. "Well, see you soon."
"Later, Hobbes."
Turning off the commlink, Hobbes looked down at his paw, which was rolling the Kyber crystal he had gotten from Yoda across his fingers. Looking at it, he promised himself that he would get his best friend back, no matter what. His visage hardened, and he looked over at the Falcon, docked inside of the Rebel ship. On that ship was the DART, concealed from prying eyes.
Calvin had already saved him at the Imperial facility on Tanka. Now he was going to return the favor.
:D