Mission on the Colossus platform

"Somebody here is working for the First Order, and we're going to find out who."

- Poe Dameron, to Kazuda Xiono

The mission on the Colossus platform, also known as the mission on Castilon, was a mission undertaken by the Resistance during the cold war to the Colossus refueling station on the ocean planet Castilon to find out who on Castilon was helping the First Order build their military.

Prelude
In 34 ABY, the Resistance obtained intelligence suggesting that someone on the planet Castilon was giving assistance to the First Order, helping with the build-up of their military.

Around the same time, three New Republic pilots were sent on a mission to rendezvous with Commander Poe Dameron, in order to deliver the intelligence. After an ambush by the First Order's Major Elrik Vonreg, two of the pilots, Mia Gabon and Hugh Sion, were told to retreat by the third, Kazuda Xiono, who promised to hold Vonreg off so they could escape, reasoning that the mission could be completed by just one pilot. Dameron arrived just in time to save Xiono from being shot down by Vonreg, and the red-armoured pilot was forced to flee in his TIE.

Onboard a Resistance corvette, Xiono turned over the intelligence, and after Dameron had talked with General Leia Organa, the eager Xiono asked to join the Resistance. Dameron agreed, and decided to assign Xiono the spying mission, as Castilon's major population centre, the Colossus refuelling platform, housed a vibrant racing circuit. Before leaving on his mission, Kazuda briefly contacted his father, Senator Hamato Xiono, and told him he was with the Resistance, but Hamato was skeptical of the claim, and Kazuda quickly ended the call.

Arrival on the Colossus
Dameron brought Xiono to the Colossus, intending to ask his old friend, former Rebel and New Republic pilot Jarek Yeager, to hire Xiono as a mechanic at his repair shop to help with his cover. Due to the sheltered life he had lived on Hosnian Prime as the son of a senator, Xiono was unprepared for the roughness of life on the Colossus, and got off to an unpromising start shortly after arriving when Neeku Vozo, one of Yeager's workers, misinterpreted a comment he made about imagining himself as "Kazuda Xiono, the greatest pilot in the Galaxy" literally, and began spreading the news across the station.

At Aunt Z's Tavern, Xiono got into a brawl after falling for a rigged dart used by the con-man Grevel, which did not enthuse Yeager about taking him on. In addition, after clarifying to Vozo that his claim of being the greatest pilot in the Galaxy had not actually been true, Xiono found himself lined up in a race for the next day after an attempt at apologizing to the literal-minded Nikto led to Vozo deciding to help him become the best pilot on the station — despite Xiono's lack of a ship. After Dameron left, leaving his droid BB-8 to keep an eye on him, Xiono was told by Vozo and Yeager that if he refused to race, he would be thrown off the platform and into the ocean.

Xiono picked Torra Doza, the youngest of the Colossus' five Aces, as his opponent for the solo race. At Yeager's shop, he and his workers had to rush to fix up an old, ramshackle ship, the Fireball, so that it would be ready in time. Yeager's other worker, Tamara Ryvora, did not take well to Xiono's presence, feeling that the shop couldn't afford another worker and resentful as Yeager had promised her that she would get the Fireball if she fixed it up. In the race, Xiono performed well but crashed after overstressing the Fireball 's engines.

Stopping Kragan Gorr's attack
Xiono took some difficulty settling into both life on the station and his cover as a mechanic and pilot due to his lack of mechanical skill, which made Ryvora suspicious of him. Shortly after Xiono's arrival, he helped drive off a pirate attack on the station by broadcasting a feedback loop through their communications channel, but was not believed when he told Yeager about it afterwards.

A target of thieves
Xiono, due to the circumstances of his arrival on the station, had quickly acquired a reputation. The racer Jace Rucklin and his team, Lin Gaava and Gorrak Wiles, saw an opportunity in Xiono's arrival. The trio had long had designs on stealing a batch of hyperfuel that they knew Yeager owned and had used when he participated in races, as Rucklin wanted every opportunity to rise to the top of the rankings. However, they knew that Yeager and his staff, Vozo, Ryvora and the astromech droid R1-J5 "Bucket", wouldn't let them get close to their shop due to their unsavoury reputation.

After learning he was working with Team Fireball, they looked for an opportunity to approach Xiono, and found one while he was at Aunt Z's Tavern. They befriended Xiono quickly, due to his frustrations about his mechanical work, and Rucklin quickly challenged Xiono to a "friendly" speeder bike race. However, Rucklin had had Wiles sabotage the bike Xiono rode, so that when it "accidentally" malfunctioned, he could ingratiate himself to Xiono by saving his life. When Xiono mentioned his new "friends" to Vozo at work later, Vozo attempted to warn Xiono about Rucklin's team's reputation, but Xiono, stressed by his work, brushed off the warnings and snuck off to see Rucklin and his team. There, Rucklin pressured Xiono into sneaking him into Yeager's private hangar to see his racer, claiming that Xiono owed him because he had saved his life.

Later that day, Xiono, despite some misgivings, snuck Rucklin into Yeager's office, although they had to avoid Bucket, Yeager and Ryvora in the process. However, the hangar's door was locked, and Xiono told Rucklin that it meant they were out of luck. While Xiono's back was turned, Rucklin stole a container of hyperfuel. When Xiono later learned of the theft, he realized that Rucklin was the thief, as he was competing in a race later in the day. Xiono and BB-8 had to rush to save Rucklin from himself, as he had no idea how much hyperfuel was too much of it, and unwittingly turned his ship into a flying bomb. After Xiono, with some assistance from BB-8 and Yeager, saved Rucklin before his ship exploded, Rucklin was anything but grateful, and vowed to eventually get Xiono back for the incident. Yeager chose not to fire Xiono, pointing out that he was a good person despite his error.

Into Doza Tower
Not that long afterwards, the Colossus suffered a fuel shortage that led Captain Imanuel Doza to shut down most of the station's power to conserve fuel while he awaited a new shipment. As a result, Xiono heard from Aunt Z her belief that Doza outright worked for the First Order, and was doing this deliberately. This led Xiono to try and get into Doza Tower to spy on him. After witnessing the arrival of a First Order freighter with a fuel shipment, containing Major Vonreg, who had come to speak to Captain Doza. Xiono managed to get an invitation into the Aces Lounge inside the tower from Hype Fazon, one of the Aces and a former friend of Ryvora.

In the lounge, Xiono snuck off to follow Vonreg and his stormtroopers while Fazon and Ryvora were arguing about the Fireball, following them to the door of Doza's office. After discovering the door was locked, Xiono slipped a comlink onto the tray of a serving droid, and eavesdropped from outside the office. He learned that the First Order was attempting to get Captain Doza to make a deal with them, via coercion. Doza told Vonreg he could report them to the New Republic, but Vonreg countered that the First Order could tell the Republic about Doza's illegal dealings with criminals. In return, Doza said that the First Order would have to do better than one fuel shipment to try and buy him, and the meeting ended with several veiled threats from Vonreg.

Xiono's presence was discovered by Vonreg and his troopers when the two comlinks he had used to eavesdrop created a loud noise by being brought too close together while they were both on, forcing him to flee. He wound up fleeing right into Torra's bedroom, where she assumed he'd come because he was attracted to her, and turned him down before helping him escape out the window. Xiono was then forced to carefully make his way along several narrow ledges on the outside of the tower, as Ryvora, Vozo and everyone else in Aunt Z's Tavern watched, and he was discovered by the stormtroopers and shot at. With BB-8's help, he made it back inside safely. However, Vonreg learned there was a spy on the Colossus, and Captain Doza became aware that Xiono was up to something.

The survivors of Tehar
While working on the Fireball, Xiono accidentally broke a valuable acceleration compensator that Ryvora had acquired for the ship, which made her furious with him. Xiono promised to get a replacement, but he had no money even to pay for a glass of water at Aunt Z's, much less an expensive compensator. He then overheard two men discussing a 20,000-credit bounty placed on two missing children, which prompted Xiono to look for them, both because he needed the money and because it was the right thing to do. Unbeknownst to Xiono, the children, siblings Eila and Kel, were being hunted by the First Order, who had placed the bounty, because they were the sole survivors of the destruction of their village on their homeworld Tehar, and the First Order was intent on covering up the atrocity.

Kel and Eila were, in fact, on the Colossus, and Xiono and Vozo, who he had enlisted as help, were knocked down by the siblings when they were fleeing the Colossus marketplace. They ran away when Xiono approached them and said he was trying to help, so he and Vozo enlisted the Chelidae engineering staff to track down the children. At this point, Xiono was summoned to the tower by Captain Doza, who, suspicious from the earlier incident in the tower, asked him why he was looking for the kids. Xiono was honest, but Doza, suspicious, didn't believe him, although he hid his suspicions from Xiono. Kel had lost a charm with a carved symbol on it earlier, and Xiono gave it to Doza. Afterwards, Doza, in an attempt to keep relations with the First Order cordial, alerted Captain Phasma that the children had been seen on the Colossus, and she sent Commander Pyre and a contingent of stormtroopers to the platform.

The Chelidae found Eila and Kel, bringing them to engineering. When Xiono and Vozo arrived and were able to talk to them, they learned what had happened to the siblings' homeworld, and that the attack had been lead by Kylo Ren. Xiono promised to help them escape. However, when Xiono and Vozo accompanied Kel back to the market to buy some medicinal herbs to help with Eila's broken leg, they were seen by Pyre and his troopers, who chased them back to engineering. Cornered, Xiono came up with a plan to fake the siblings' deaths. When Pyre and his troopers burst in, they saw the children standing in front of an open grate leading to the ocean below, and when Pyre ordered the children to come with him, Kel refused before he and Eila apparently jumped to their deaths. In reality, they landed in a maintenance area just below, while two Chelidae jumped into the water. The shellfolk slowed their vital signs to trick the stormtroopers' scanner, and Pyre left, reporting to Phasma that the children were "no more". The Chelidae offered Kel and Eila a place to stay, and Xiono reported everything to the Resistance.

The pirate spy
Xiono's report on Doza's potential dealings with the First Order caused Dameron to pay him a visit, where he took him flying in a loaned X-wing. While out with their astromech droids, they picked up a distress call from a Darius G-class freighter and investigated, rescuing a woman, Synara San, from the ship and bringing her to the Colossus, where Xiono and Yeager registered her. Unbeknownst to Xiono and his friends, San was actually a member of the Warbird gang, and they had handed her and the gang a perfect opportunity, as they now had a spy on the platform.

San's first opportunity came a few weeks later. Under orders to blend in, she had gotten a job working with the salvagers on the Colossus' loading docks. Xiono and Ryvora came to her looking for a CoMar Tri-Tracker chip, as Team Fireball had secretly been hired to repair the targeting computer for the platform defences. This led San to discover that the defences were down, and after all of the Aces were sent off-platform to escort in an important shipment, she signalled Gorr to carry out another attack on the platform. Much damage was done before Xiono and Yeager managed to install the repaired targeting computer, enough such that Doza, concerned about the vulnerability of the Colossus, was forced to reconsider the First Order's offer of protection.

Behind the scenes
The first footage of the mission on the Colossus platform was shown in the Star Wars Resistance first look trailer on August 17, 2018. The mission began in the show's premiere, "The Recruit", and is a major focus of the show's first season.