Private Tales of the Jedi Underground: Ash Choked Skies

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

Mission to Balmorra
Balmorra’s factories now churn for the Empire, powered by enslaved labour, including captured Jedi sympathisers. Breaking them free may turn the tide of local resistance.
Objective: Liberate key prisoners and disrupt Imperial weapons shipments.
Complication: The city is heavily patrolled. Imperial officers hide behind the civilian population as shields.
Difficulty Rating: Hard
Mission Leadership: Jedi Knight or above to lead, Padawan may accompany.

BALMORRA
Bastila​

The air above Balmorra was thick with smoke haze, it’s once clean air choked by the insufferable need for steel. From the shadowed ridge where the two Jedi crouched, Bastila could hear the factories groan, their colossal engines grinding away like the heart of some chained beast. The smell of molten ore and scorched metal clung to the back of her throat, making her want to gag and cough it back up. It was oppressive in every single way. Somewhere inside those walls, people were being broken and fed into the Empire’s war machine. People who had once believed in the same light she carried. People who had once and hopefully still called themselves Jedi.

Her fingers tightened on the cold permacrete ledge as she crawled closer to the edge and leaned forward just enough to see beyond and allow her to study the facility below. Rows of floodlights cast the courtyards in hard white light, making every figure below stand out in stark relief. Imperial Stormtroopers paced in pairs, rifles ready, their discipline exact and purposeful, their watchful eye on their charges. Between them shuffled thin silhouettes; prison-workers stripped of all dignity, easily distinguished by shock collars and the hollow eyes of defeat. The rhythm of their leg chains rattling carried even up to their vantage.

It was worse than the briefing had feared.

A glance to the side caught Aiden’s presence, steady and silent. A beacon of surety among the chaos that the planet wished to devour them with, but Bastila had to force her focus back down and carry on with the mission, they didn’t really have the time to delay. The odds were stacked against them; the Imperial’s had layered patrols, sensor towers on the corners, and transports docking to ferry weapons off-world. The Empire had built a fortress and filled it with the innocent. This is why they were here, the Rogue Squadron had wanted to make a move but the call to strike here meant risking the very lives they were meant to save, so a small insertion team was decided on instead.

Her heart thudded faster than she liked at the thought. Every Jedi lesson urged calm, but Balmorra was pressing on her nerves; the hum of industry, the stench of exploitation, the endless reminder of what failure meant. It was such a far cry from the green plains of Naboo and the wide open sky. She could almost hear the voices of the imprisoned, though she knew it was only her imagination stitching pain into the silence between clattering machines.

“I’m pretty sure this is the one from the report.” she whispered, more to herself than to Aiden. “It’s pretty heavily guarded.”

Below, a shift bell sounded, and the flood of labourers changed direction; one group herded out, and another driven in. The moment might offer their first opening. But the factory gates were flanked by two heavy gun emplacements, and the troopers guiding the workers carried more than rifles.

Bastila drew a breath, forcing the fear down into something colder, sharper. She had to focus with that famous Jedi ability to do the right thing no matter the personal cost. This was no place for doubt. The prisoners had to be freed. The weapons had to stop. Even if the path ahead seemed impossible.

Her gaze flicked once more across the grounds, marking movements, patterns, weaknesses, however small.

“Your mission, Aiden, so it’s your call?” she murmured, eyes narrowing on the gates. “But whatever way we take in…I have a bad feeling about it.”

Aiden Porte ​

 

[Aiden Porte]

The smoke-streaked air bit at his lungs, each breath tinged with the metallic tang of Balmorra's suffering. Aiden kept his form low, a hand braced against the ledge beside Bastila, eyes tracking the sweep of spotlights below. He could feel her unease even before she whispered, a tremor running beneath her words like a string pulled too taut.

“Your mission, Aiden, so it’s your call?”

"My mission?!" Aiden whispered back to her as he gave her a gentle nudge with his arm. "You are the one who dragged me out here. 'MaStEr PoRtE, PlEaSe hElP I cAn't dO it wItHout YoU.' " Aiden said with a gentle teasingly mock, just a small chance to give her a sense of relief as he sensed her heightened feelings. "I'm just kidding." He said with a small smile as he looked back over the edge.

The Empire's fortress churned with precision: stormtroopers moving like cogs, laborers herded like livestock, weapons ferried to fuel a war without end. It was the kind of sight that could erode hope, grind it down until even the strongest spirits faltered. Aiden shut his eyes for a heartbeat, letting the Force wash over him, catching the faint sparks of willpower buried in the prisoners' despair. Fragile, yes, but not gone.

He leaned just enough for his shoulder to brush Bastila's, a grounding presence against the cold ridge. "It's bad," he admitted quietly, gaze sharpening on the rhythm of the shifts, the fleeting pattern of opportunity. "But it's not impenetrable. Nothing is."

His focus flicked to the gun emplacements at the gates. Heavy weapons. Too much to take head-on. Yet the laborer shift… that was their opening. If they timed it right, slipped into the stream of prisoners, they could vanish into the belly of the machine instead of charging its teeth.

He tilted his chin toward the courtyards, toward the ebb and flow of the chained. "We move with them. The collars will make it risky, but the patrols won't be watching for anyone slipping in." A brief pause, his jaw tightening. "We'll need to disable the emplacements before freeing the prisoners, it won't mean much if the Empire slaughters them at the gates."

His eyes caught hers, steady and unflinching. The doubt he sensed in her, he countered with calm resolve—not dismissing her fear, but tempering it. "You're right to have a bad feeling. I do too. But that's how we know this matters. And if something goes sideways and we are forced to run, you run. You don't worry about me, you get to safety. Is that understood?"

With all things considered, she was a Sal-Soren, she was talented and gifted. Yet she also had a family to go back to. He couldn't look Briana, Brandyn, Blaire , any of them in eyes if something happened to Bastila.

He glanced back at the shifting lights below, then slid his hand to the hilt at his belt, the gesture not of a warrior eager for a fight, but of one preparing for inevitability. It wasn't getting in that was bothering him, it was the getting out and escaping that was the issue. Aiden glanced up as a flicker in the distance caught his attention, an access shaft, no doubt leading inside, but to where.

"When the next shift bell sounds, we go."

He tapped Bastila on the shoulder as he pointed out the access vent. "We can risk going through the front via cover of prisoners, or try that access hatch? There should be more around here, if we press inside we can keep a sharp eye for those, just in case as a quick means of escaping."

Bastila Sal-Soren

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

BASTILA​

Her lips tugged into something halfway between a frown and a smirk at his mocking impression of her voice. Typical Aiden; always trying to bleed some levity into moments that felt anything but light. She might have snapped back, but the truth was, it helped. A knot of tension in her chest eased, if only a little, and the corner of her mouth betrayed her with the faintest grin.

“Very funny,” she murmured, eyes still on the factory below. “I’ll have you know, I only begged because the mission needed a Knight and as much as everyone doesn’t believe it I am not a knight. Plus I got told you’re like a glorified battering ram… if battering rams had questionable manners.”

The smile faded as her gaze caught again on the workers’ bent backs, the glint of shock collars at their throats. His plan had sense, meld into the flow, disappearing in to the masses in plain sight. But she couldn’t quiet the voice that whispered how easily it could go wrong. If one trooper looked too closely. If one collar’s control is triggered by accident. If the gun emplacements opened fire before they reached them. It would be a blood bath.

Her hand strayed to her vambrace, fingertips brushing over the comm stud, though she didn’t press it. There’d be no reinforcement waiting. No cavalry to ride in if it all fell apart. Just the two of them.

She drew a long breath, letting the smoke-laced air fill her lungs before exhaling slowly. Fear leads nowhere. Fear blinds. The lesson was older than she was, but it helped, steadying her heartbeat against the rush of doubt.

“You’re right,” she admitted finally, though her tone carried a spark of defiance. “It matters because it’s impossible. And if it does go sideways, if you think I’m running and leaving you to clean up alone, you’ve chosen the wrong Sal-Soren to go on this mission with.” A quick glance at him, eyes glinting despite the tension. “You don’t get to have me be the coward in this story.”

The shift bell clanged again, echoing through the courtyard below. The stream of prisoners began to shuffle forward, guards barking orders over the clatter of chains.

Her pulse picked up. This was the moment.

She lowered herself further along the ridge, body close to the stone, scanning the perimeter. The access vent Aiden pointed out yawned like a mouth across the far side of the wall. It was closer than she liked to one of the towers, but it might be the cleaner path if they could get to it unseen. The prisoner flow was the riskier play: if their timing slipped by a breath, they’d be exposed.

“Two bad options,” she whispered. “I feel right at home already.”

Her eyes lingered on the huddled stream of prisoners only a breath longer before shifting back to the vent across the wall. Too many variables with the guards, too much risk if even a single trooper caught the wrong detail. The vent might be narrow, tight with unknowns, but it was quieter and probably safer for the prisoners.

She tipped her chin toward it. “The hatch. Better chance of getting in without raising the alarm. If we’re lucky, it won’t lead straight to an incinerator chute.” The dry edge to her tone was deliberate—an attempt to veil the truth that her stomach knotted tighter with each step closer.

The two of them slid into motion, keeping low. Bastila’s breath matched her stride, steady and shallow, each inhale fighting against the acrid sting of the smoke-laden air. The world narrowed to the rhythm of their boots over gravel, the sweep of floodlights overhead. One beam passed so close across the ground she froze mid-step, heart battering against her ribs, until it swept away again. Only then did she dare exhale.

They reached the factory wall, collapsing against its durasteel surface that was cold even through her gloves. The vent loomed just above them, wide enough for a person if they pressed tight. But its grille was fastened down with bolts that gleamed faintly in the harsh light. Bastila crouched beneath it, jaw tightening.

“Of course,” she muttered under her breath. “Would’ve been far too easy otherwise.”

She pulled a small tool from her belt, glancing up at Aiden with a fleeting grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’ve got this. Cover me. If anyone looks this way, distract them. Tell them we are from the Alliance or something. I’ll make it quick.”

The tool whispered as she worked, each twist a heartbeat stretched into eternity. The hum of the factory seemed louder now, the patrols’ footsteps closer. She could almost feel the pressure of time grinding down on them as surely as the machines chewed metal behind the walls.

One bolt came loose. Then another. Her fingers brushed the grille free, and she caught it before it could clatter against the durasteel. A small victory, but her pulse raced like they’d already stolen the prisoners out from under the Empire’s nose.

She slid the grille aside, glancing at the dark maw of the vent. Air stirred faintly from within, carrying the metallic tang of oil and heat.

Bastila looked once more at Aiden, voice low, the ghost of humor curling her words. “After you, Master Porte. You are the glorified battering ram after all.”

She kept her saber close at hand as he moved first, ready to follow him into the belly of the machine.

Aiden Porte​