Episode V.01

On the remote planet of Hoth, grizzled, veteran pirates Vash Lodestar and Niko Daedalus hid their starship, the scout striker Nerio in an ice cave in the snowy wastelands.  As they made repairs to the starship, they saw a flaming contrail streak across the clear blue sky and impact the surface on the opposite side of a snowbank outside their icy cove.  Mounting their hovertrikes, they set out to get a closer look at the crash site.  From the frozen summit of the snowbank, they saw an Imperial probe droid gliding across the planet's snowy plain.  It fired a shot at them, which nearly struck Vash, and then heard a barrage of blaster fire from below.  Peering down, they saw the smuggler Han Solo and his Wookiee companion Chewbacca at the foot of the snowbank.  The group convened and discussed their respective hideouts on the planet.  Solo explained that he had fallen in with a group of political rebels, but had been planning to leave their company to take care of some "personal matters," and suggested departing Hoth alongside the Nerio in his own ship, the Millennium Falcon, since the probe droid had probably revealed their presence to the Empire and there was "safety in numbers."  Vash and Niko agreed to wait for Solo and the Wookiee to return to their ship, but the delay cost them:  Imperial drop-ships swarmed the area, depositing AT-AT walkers across the plain.  They helped the rebels fend off the AT-ATs and flew into the icy caverns of Echo base, dodging departing X-wings and finding Chewbacca in a hanger, waiting for Solo and "a member of the high command" he was transporting off-world.  Vash blew a "back door" in the hanger and, when Solo and his passenger boarded, the Nerio led the Falcon into space from a comfortable distance.  Together, the ships fended off some TIE fighters that the Imperial blockade ships had dispatched, and Solo made a hasty departure into an asteroid field, leaving the Nerio to fend for itself.  Niko piloted the scout striker into the asteroid field as well, but landed on the largest asteroid it could find, hiding in a cave.  The cave turned out to be a mynock hive, and when they departed hastily, the hull was covered in leeching mynocks that made visual navigation impossible.  Heading back toward Hoth in the hopes of burning off the mynocks in the atmosphere, the Nerio clipped its wing on a mountainside and crashed.

Some indeterminate time later, Vash and Niko awoke in Imperial custody and were hauled to a cell where the Empire also held the captured General Rieekan.  They declined to join forces with the Rebel leader and were subsequently hauled before Darth Vader, who insisted they reveal the vector of the Millennium Falcon, which his pilots witnessed them escorting away from Hoth.  They bargained with Vader's subordinant, Lieutenant Gogos, to retrieve their ship so they could check the navigational computer and sensor records.  Gogos promised them their freedom and their ship repaired if their information led to the location of the Millennium Falcon.  Once the data from the Nerio's computer was acquired, Vader transmitted it to the sensors and navigational computer of his Star Destroyer, and a bounty hunter in Mandalorian armor who had recently met with Vader surreptitiously retrieved it during the transmission.  The data led the Empire to a remote Tibanna gas mining facility in the Bespin system, which Imperial records indicated was run by a former smuggler.  Lieutenant Gogos took a chance on inquiring from the pirates if they knew the man, and Vash and Niko recognized the description immediately:  Lando Calrissian!  Vader personally tasked Vash and Niko with obtaining Calrissian's willing participation in the capture of the Millennium Falcon in exchange for their unconditional release, and dubbed them "emissaries of the Empire."  Vash and Niko agreed to the terms, retrieved their repaired ship from Lt. Gogos' technicians, and proceeded to Cloud City.

After announcing themselves to Cloud City's air patrol, they were granted clearance to land and Lando Calrissian met them personally.  They informed him of the purpose of their visit, to obtain his participation in the capture of his old acquaintance Han Solo on behalf of the Empire.  At first, Lando refused, declaring that doing so would violate an unwritten code of honor among smugglers.  They convinced him that money talks, and that the fate of his Tibanna gas operation hung in the balance if he refused the Empire's demands.  Eventually, Lando relented to the pirate pair, and prepared his security force for the imminent arrival of Solo and his companions.  In return for their service to the Empire, Vader personally emancipated the pirates, and they sped away for safer space.

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