Home is Where the Hoth Is
@starsresisted
Even for an ice planet, Hoth was cold -- not for the temperature so much as the isolation. It was worse than being in space, somehow; at least you knew that no matter how long and solitary the trip, eventually your ship would drop out of hyperspace and you would be back among the rest of the galaxy. Here, there was no such guarantee; the Rebellion might well be based on Hoth for years.
Leia didn’t think that was likely -- for one thing, the extreme conditions strained their already sparse resources and she knew that Cracken had at least a few agents out there tasked with keeping their ear to the ground for a more favorable location amdist their other, more crucial duties...and for another? She knew that no matter how tight their security, eventually everything leaked. The Empire would catch up to them; it was only a matter of time, and making the most of what they had.
That would be hard to do from in here, though. Leia gave the door another angry shove then pulled back, rubbing her shoulder. “It’s no good,” she announced, “it’s frozen solid. What laser-brain had the heat settings up high enough to start the doorframe melting, anyway? It’ll take ages for someone to de-ice all that and get us out.” Add to that the extra ten to twenty minutes that would inevitably be added to the extraction process due to the fact that it was Threepio who’d been tasked with finding someone to free them...
But Leia didn’t want to worry the impromptu companion who’d been unlucky enough to get stuck in this stupid storage room with her. She looked both young and nervous -- not that Leia herself was old by any standard of galactic reckoning, but more and more often these days she felt it. Besides, she was the princess; it was her duty to keep her cool in any crisis -- and this was hardly a crisis; more an annoyance. There was no call for her to lose her temper, at least not until she discovered the party responsible for the temporary melt and re-freeze that had them trapped in here, and she doubted it was the young woman with her.
In fact, Leia realized that not only did she not know her companion’s name but she didn’t even recognize her face. A new recruit, then. “We might as well make ourselves comfortable as we can,” she said, choosing a plastisteel crate of blaster power packs for a seat and massaging her sore shoulder. “We’ll be here a while. I’m Leia,” she added, offering her hand. “I don’t think I know you?”
