Occupation of the Colossus

"...This is a full-on occupation..."

- Kazuda Xiono to Jarek Yeager

During the cold war, the First Order began an occupation of the Colossus refueling station on the planet Castilon.

Prelude
The First Order, in their preparations for their planned war against the rest of the galaxy, particularly the New Republic, became interested in the Colossus, an old super tanker fuel depot on Castilon, as a potential staging area, due to its location. However, they were aware that the platform's owner, Captain Imanuel Doza, was reluctant to cede control of the platform to anyone, and distrusted the First Order. Therefore, the First Order hired the Warbird gang, led by Kragan Gorr, to repeatedly raid the platform to create a threat they could offer protection from.

At the same time, the Resistance became aware of the First Order's interest in the platform and, suspecting they had a spy on the platform, sent in one of their own, the newly-recruited Kazuda Xiono, on a mission to discover what the First Order was doing there. Accompanied by the astromech droid BB-8, Xiono got a cover job as a mechanic at Jarek Yeager's repair shop and a member of Team Fireball.

Over the course of the months after Xiono's arrival, the Warbirds attacked the platform several times, with the Ace Squadron, and various residents including Xiono, fighting them off. None were aware of the connection between the pirates and the First Order. In fact, Xiono unwittingly gave the pirates invaluable assistance when he and Poe Dameron rescued one of them, Synara San, from a derelict freighter, allowing her to become a spy on the platform. Eventually, after a particularly devastating attack, Doza, despite his concerns regarding the First Order, was forced to reconsider their offer.

However, Doza's consideration of the order took longer than Captain Phasma and Commander Pyre liked, and they eventually came up with another plan. When Gorr, unhappy about the higher-than-expected losses he had taken on the job, demanded triple payment, Pyre agreed, and ordered Gorr to kidnap Torra Doza, Captain Doza's daughter, to finally pressure him into allowing a full-time First Order presence. Via San, pirates Valik and Drell were snuck onto the platform one night and into Doza Tower, where they kidnapped Torra. However, San had begun to doubt her mission after befriending several Colossus residents, including Xiono, and when she ran into him where he had been looking for her, told him about the kidnapping. Xiono and the Aces went in pursuit of Torra, and reached Gorr's ship the Galleon in enough time to see Torra be "rescued" by the First Order's Major Elrik Vonreg. Torra was returned to the platform on Vonreg's Upsilon-class command shuttle.

In the name of security
As the First Order had hoped, the kidnapping they had staged proved the final pressure needed to convince Captain Doza to reluctantly accept a detachment of stormtroopers on the Colossus. However, Doza insisted that he wanted the troops to leave as soon as the pirate threat had been neutralized. The stormtroopers, and TIE fighters which arrived as well, instituted a curfew on the platform and frequently demanded that residents show their ID. Many residents of the platform were mostly unbothered, having fallen for the First Order's "rescue" of Torra, and believed that the troopers were there to keep security on Captain Doza's wishes.

Doza, however, was displeased by reports of stormtroopers ignoring the platform's laws, but he was powerless to make them leave given what they had supposedly done in rescuing his daughter, as well as the pirate threat the First Order themselves had manufactured. Xiono wanted to inform Dameron and the rest of the Resistance about the occupation, but Yeager warned him that, as the First Order was almost certainly monitoring all off-planet communications, he might blow his cover if he did that, and advised him to wait until Dameron contacted him instead.

Helping Synara
The detachment's first order of business was identifying and capturing the Warbirds' spy, Synara San, who could inform Captain Doza of the pirate gang's former arrangements with the First Order. However, Xiono, who had befriended San and deduced she was a spy after Torra's kidnapping, decided to help her escape anyway. With the assistance of BB-8 and Neeku Vozo, Xiono helped San escape the Colossus via the last remaining escape pod on one of the underwater levels. Xiono and Vozo managed to avoid identification by the First Order, but Xiono was already under suspicion for having been seen in the vicinity of Doza Tower with San the night of the kidnapping, so he still had to be cautious.

Impersonating a stormtrooper
In preparation for the arrival of a full garrison on the platform, troops began cataloguing all residents of the Colossus. During a search, trooper CS-515 overheard two children, Kel and Eila, who were in hiding on the platform as they were fugitives from the First Order, laughing while fishing for snarlfish. When he attempted to apprehend him, the siblings knocked him unconscious in self-defence, before hiding him inside a closet and going to Xiono for help. Xiono disguised himself as the stormtrooper to determine if CS-515 had reported the children's presence to any other First Order personnel.

In his investigation, Xiono determined that the trooper hadn't had the chance to do so, and discovered that once the garrison arrived, the First Order intended to arrest all Colossus residents who refused to support them. Xiono was nearly unmasked after giving Pyre and Sergeant CS-812 the impression something was wrong with "CS-515"'s mental conditioning, but managed to switch the trooper back before he could be captured, leading the dazed trooper to be led away for a "brain scrub". Xiono later showed Yeager and BB-8 a data rod he stole from the First Order shuttle, which detailed a galactic map lined with red dots that Yeager suspected were First Order fleets. This led him to suspect that the First Order wanted the Colossus as a military supply station to refuel their fleet for the oncoming war.

Sneaking offworld
While the occupation was going on, Commander Dameron snuck onto the Colossus to retrieve BB-8, as he and the droid had been assigned a mission to Jakku by General Leia Organa. He brought CB-23 along as a replacement. Xiono, Dameron and BB-8 snuck off the platform in the Fireball by means of a Widowmaker maneuver, and investigated the desolate Dassal system, where the First Order had been active, before parting ways, Xiono returning to the Colossus with CB-23. When his coworkers Vozo and Tamara Ryvora inquired about the new droid, Xiono claimed that he had had to leave BB-8 on Takodana for repairs, and that CB-23 was a temporary replacement. However, Ryvora was suspicious, as the Colossus had been locked down by the First Order, which for her begged the question of why and how Xiono had gotten off the platform unseen in the first place.

The purge
As Phasma's reinforcements arrived on the Colossus day by day, Commander Pyre convinced Captain Doza to suspend the platform races, ostensibly because they were a security risk, when in truth it was to eliminate the Aces as a threat. This outraged Hype Fazon, who attempted to take his ship out for a spin, only to find stormtroopers fitting it with a magnetic lock, thus grounding him. Fazon was soon detained by the stormtroopers. His disappearance concerned Torra, who passed her concerns onto Xiono, Ryvora and Neeku Vozo.

Overhearing their conversation, Aunt Z voiced her suspicions that the First Order was responsible for Fazon's disappearance and were mostly likely abducting anyone who so much as spoke against them. This was overheard by a First Order BB unit, who alerted two stormtroopers and insinuated the group were spouting conspiracy theories. Ryvora directly asked the stormtroopers as to Fazon's whereabouts and they falsely claimed that he had left the platform, which Ryvora accepted without question. When the troopers suggested the youngsters join the First Order, prompting Aunt Z to toss their propaganda poster projector at them and ordered them to leave and find recruits elsewhere.

Finding the troopers' story suspect, Torra and Xiono infiltrated Fazon's hanger and found his ship was sitting there, confirming the stormtroopers were lying. They soon return to Aunt Z's to find the tavern being solely managed G1-7CH, who claimed his master had disappeared, enabling the First Order to place as many propaganda posters as they desired. They ran to Yeager's repairs, where Xiono barged in on Yeager talking with Captain Doza. Doza admitted that he knew the First Order were quietly abducting platform citizens who defy them and were holding them on the west docks to await transport offworld, but he couldn't open defy them without putting his constituents at risk.

Though Yeager and Doza were planning on taking down the First Order communication blanket to contact the Resistance for aid in pushing the First Order off the platform, Xiono and Torra refused to wait and went to rescue the prisoners. They freed the prisoners and commandeer the First Order transport so the stormtroopers wouldn't know of their escape and tear the platform apart looking for them. Aunt Z, Hype Fazon and the other freed prisoners Nod and Grevel then traveled to Takodana where Aunt Z had a friend.