Fleeing before a wrathful Darth Vader, the Rebel Alliance scatters, abandoning its secret base on the planet Hoth. With a malfunctioning hyperdrive and the Sith Lord's fleet on his tail, brash pilot-turned-freedom-fighter, Han Solo throws his ship, the Millenium Falcon, into a series of jinks and maneuvers in a vain effort to loose his pursuers. After hiding in an asteroid field and staging an audacious disappearing act right on the stern of an Imperial Star Destroyer, Solo opts to bet everything on the trust of an old acquaintance and speeds the Falcon to Cloud City on Bespin for repairs.

Onboard the fleeing ship, Princess Leia performs her own evasive maneuvers. Deftly fending the Corellian's roguish advances, she entrusts her fate to him nonetheless, knowing Solo's plan is their best chance for escape.

Han Solo is a man with two lives- his past, as a rogue and a scoundrel, and his present, a man with a reason to live and fight, beyond his own selfish needs. In seeking refuge on Cloud City, Solo risks everything on the character of his former associate, Lando Calrissian, the facility's dashing Baron Administrator. In Lando, Princess Leia sees much of the man Han Solo used to be, but the degree to which he has changed and the truth of her own love for him only becomes clear to the Princess when Calrissian betrays them all to Lord Vader.

Prisoners of the Empire, and standing at the edge of the pit into which Han Solo will be lowered and likely die, an understanding passes between Leia and Solo- a promise for the future, and a reason to stay alive.