Before anything else: set aside an hour to an hour and a half. That’s Extreme difficulty with no good place to stop partway through — and I was taking my time and stopping to take notes, so a focused run should land at the shorter end. If you’ve got twenty minutes before you need to be somewhere, do a Tactical Mission instead and come back to this when you’ve got a real block of time.
Behind Enemy Lines is the Luunata mission — Jae Mordant’s home planet, the one the Infinite Coil took from her. The new thermal shields are what finally let the Caisson get through the volcano, and Jae is blunt about what that means: this is the best shot she’s going to get at taking her world back. The objective is the Citadel, and specifically the guns, which have to come down before the Republic fleet can move in.
Behind Enemy Lines – Mission at a glance
| Planet | Luunata |
| Difficulty | Extreme |
| Prerequisite | Thermal shields (volcano traversal) |
| Time | 1–1.5 hours |
| Rewards | 5,000 credits, 150 Den XP, 2 Contacts, 1 Capacitor |
Behind Enemy Lines – The squad I brought
I’ll be honest with you up front, because this is a walkthrough and not a highlight reel: I did not set this one up the way I wish I had. I went in with Hawks already carrying an injury, and I didn’t have my ideal lineup available. I handed Jae a medpack and hoped.
What I ran:
- Hawks — Gunslinger, pistol
- BR-1, the astromech
- Cly Kullervo, Mandalorian Warrior
- Jae Mordant
Having played it through, I’d bring this same four again. The composition isn’t what I’d change — the preparation is. Here’s why each of them earns the slot.
Hawks is required, so the only real question is the build, and mine paid off. Gunslinger with a pistol means frequent attacks rather than a few big ones, and I’ve invested in his assists so they hit harder. Over a mission this long, an operator who contributes a little on almost every exchange adds up faster than one who contributes a lot occasionally.
BR-1 was essential, though not for the reason I expected going in. The grenades matter, but what mattered more was him handing out ability points, turn after turn. That’s what keeps everyone else’s expensive abilities flowing.
Cly Kullervo has a risky attack style — she gets in close and she takes hits for it — and that’s exactly what makes her fun. Paired with the Electro-Darts she was enormously effective, and it’s the AP coming from BR-1 that makes her expensive abilities affordable in the first place. If you take one thing from this article into your own run, take that pairing.
Jae and Final Shot. I’ll come back to this repeatedly because it genuinely carried the mission. Some hard numbers: I killed 62 enemies across this mission, and I’d put 10 to 12 of them on Final Shot. At Extreme difficulty there are a lot of almost-dead enemies, and she turns them into dead ones without spending a full attack to do it.
One note specific to my run that may or may not apply to yours: the B1 battle droids here have more health than they used to, because of a permanent choice I made earlier in the campaign. I’m no longer one-shotting them. That turned out to be a gift rather than a problem, because it left them sitting in exactly the health band where Jae’s Final Shot picks them off — but if you took the other option on that one, your stage one will go faster than mine did. (More on those permanent choices in the irreversible decisions hub.)
Stage one: the cave
The objective here is to reach the point where you can summon the turbolift. The Coil forces in this first room sit around 24 health, which is manageable, and it’s a good room to learn the rhythm you’ll use for the rest of the mission.
I opened the way I almost always open when the enemy composition suits it — BR-1’s utility items first. Bombs and grenades to either take a couple out outright or soften a cluster. Hawks is built to assist, so he’s usually the one answering when another operator calls for it.
A few things from my first couple of turns worth stealing:
- I took out a pair of enemies on turn one, which set the whole fight up. Front-loading matters here.
- Overwatch killed a B1 that was in cover. Cover is not safety in this room.
- Cly took a couple of hits, so at the end of my turn I moved her out of the line of fire rather than leaving her parked.
- These enemies retaliate. This is the single most annoying thing about the room. Attacking into them has a cost, and it’s worth thinking about whether a kill is worth the counter.
- On turn two, with five or six enemies left, I spent an action on Electro-Web Darts purely as setup for a later Surge. A turn that deals no damage feels bad in the moment. It is not a wasted turn — see the next section.
With two enemies left I played aggressively and closed it out, using the Surge advantage I’d built to finish one of the last two.
The lift is not the end of the stage
Here’s the trap, and it got me: summoning the turbolift doesn’t end the fight. You still have to clear the Coil forces before you can ride it, and summoning triggers reinforcements — eight enemies, four from the left and four from the right.
That’s a pincer, and it punishes a squad that’s bunched on one side of the room after a clean sweep. Set up Overwatch before you summon, and don’t spend your charged abilities clearing the last few enemies thinking you’re done.
This is where the setup turn pays off. I dropped Cly into the middle of the left-hand group with her jetpack and wiped all four with an Electro-Web Surge plus follow-up attacks. One turn, four enemies, because I’d spent an action on darts several turns earlier.
After that it’s cleanup. The remaining Coil forces aren’t especially dangerous, and if your team is in decent shape you can take them one at a time without any particular cleverness. Not every room needs a plan.
Between stages: the mining area
Up the turbolift, and there’s a stretch of map to cross on the way to the Citadel. Two things to pick up:
- Scout the mining area — worth 3 Advantage going into the next fight.
- A datapad up the steps heading toward the Citadel.
Beyond that there isn’t much out here. Grab those two and move on.
Stage two: approaching the Citadel
This one went fast, and it’s the clearest demonstration of the formula the whole mission runs on:
- Concussion grenade into a cluster — mine caught four droids at once.
- Jae finishes one off with Final Shot.
- Electro-Web Darts, then Cly shocks the group, taking out another B1.
- Mop up the remaining droids and the reinforcing Coil members.
Soften with AoE, finish with Jae, build Cly’s charge, release it into a group. That’s the engine. Once you see it, you can run it in every room of this mission where the enemies are standing close enough together.
Notably, Hawks’ injury wasn’t costing me anything to this point. I kept waiting for it to bite.
Behind Enemy Lines – The cutscene before the control room
Before you reach the control room, a significant story beat plays out: Fathom infects her own son with the Shadow Plague. It reframes a fair amount about what the Infinite Coil actually is and what she’s willing to spend to get it — and it’s the direct setup for the fight waiting at the top of the Citadel.
Then the enemies close in on the control room, and you’re back in it.
Behind Enemy Lines – Stage three: the control room
Everything gets harder here, and in a specific way worth preparing for.
Enemy health jumps to 58–64 each. That’s roughly two and a half times the opening room. Nothing dies to a single attack anymore.
Cly cannot use her jetpack in this room. The ceiling takes Combat Jump away, which means the play that won you stage one — drop into the middle of a group, Surge, wipe it — is simply unavailable. If you’ve been leaning on it, you need another answer before you walk in.
The enemies start spread out. Impact bombs and concussion grenades are close to useless against a scattered formation, so BR-1’s role changes: instead of opening with utility items, he spends the early turns handing out ability points. Keep him useful rather than forcing a bad grenade.
It does loosen up. After a few turns enemies start appearing in multiple areas across the room, and the groupings get much more conducive to grenades again. Hold your AoE until then.
Final Shot, once again, is what makes the room survivable. With everything sitting at 58–64 health and nothing dying cleanly, the ability to finish a weakened target without spending a full attack is the difference between progress and attrition.
Stop playing for a full clear
When I reached the point where the turbolift became my escape route, there were still eight or nine enemies on screen, and I was playing about as efficiently as I know how.
This is the most useful thing I’ve learned about Zero Company at the harder difficulties, and it took me longer than it should have: when the game gives you an exit, the exit is the win condition, not the kill count. Clearing the room is a habit from the easier missions, and here it will cost you operators for nothing.
One caveat, and it matters: this applies where there’s an escape route. The fight at the top of the Citadel has no exit — see below. Read the objective before you decide which kind of fight you’re in.
I made it to the top of the Citadel with exactly one injury on the whole run, on Cly.
Behind Enemy Lines – The Visser fight
The escape isn’t an escape. At the top of the Citadel you fight Visser, Fathom’s son, newly infected.
Which is the design of the mission in a sentence: it spends three stages teaching you that you don’t have to kill everything, and then puts something in front of you that you can’t walk past.
The one thing you need to know
Visser puts up a high-evasion field around himself. If you sit there feeding single-target attacks into it, you will watch them miss and you will run out of health trying.
AoE strips it. A concussion grenade or the Electro-Web shock knocks the field out. Then you hit him.
That’s the fight. Everything else is endurance.
Killing Visser doesn’t end the battle
This is worth knowing before you get there, because it’s the opposite of what the control room just taught you: the fight continues after Visser goes down, and it doesn’t end until every Coil enemy is dead. There’s no extraction option here. When he fell I still had four enemies left to deal with, and by that point I was carrying two injuries on Cly plus injuries on Jae and Hawks.
So don’t spend everything on the boss. Budget for a cleanup phase with a beaten-up squad — this was the closest my run has come to falling apart.
And then — one more time — Jae closed it out with Final Shot. I got everyone out alive.
The guns
You don’t have to do anything about the Citadel guns yourself — so don’t go hunting for a terminal mid-fight. Once the last Coil enemy is down, it resolves in a cutscene: the guns are deactivated, there’s a struggle on the way out, and the Republic ships come in to cover the extraction and get your team off Luunata.
Which is the point of the whole mission. Jae gets her planet back.
Behind Enemy Lines – I’d do differently
The squad was right. The prep wasn’t.
- Don’t bring an injured Hawks. It never punished me, and I spent the whole mission waiting for it to. That’s luck, not planning.
- Stock up on stims and bacta before you launch. This is the real lesson. At Extreme difficulty against these enemy counts, avoiding damage simply isn’t on the table — you are going to get hit, repeatedly, and the only question is whether you can do anything about it mid-mission. Bring more healing than you think the mission warrants.
- Consider swapping a concussion grenade for another healing item on BR-1. I’d still want one grenade for the clustered rooms, but I had more AoE than I could use in the control room and not enough healing anywhere.
- Do bring Jae. Beyond the fact that it’s her planet, Final Shot solved the inflated-health B1s in stage one, the spread-out control room where my AoE was dead, and the boss. She’s the MVP of this mission by a wide margin.
- Consider a Medic secondary skill on one of your operators – Jae or Hawks as a Medic to help add more healing options could be quite helpful.
- Spend the setup turn on darts. It feels like a wasted action every single time. It isn’t.
Behind Enemy Lines – TL;DR
- Behind Enemy Lines — Luunata, Extreme difficulty, 1–1.5 hours. Rewards 5,000 credits, 150 Den XP, 2 Contacts, 1 Capacitor.
- Comp that worked: Hawks (Gunslinger, pistol, assist-focused), BR-1, Cly Kullervo, Jae Mordant. BR-1 feeding ability points to Cly is what makes her expensive abilities affordable.
- Bring stims and bacta. You cannot avoid damage at this difficulty — pack healing over extra grenades.
- Stage one: ~24 health enemies. Enemies retaliate, and cover doesn’t save them from Overwatch. Spend a turn on Electro-Web Darts as setup.
- Summoning the turbolift doesn’t end the stage — it spawns eight reinforcements, four from each side. Set Overwatch before you call it. Cly’s jetpack into the middle of one group plus a Surge wipes four at once.
- Grab 3 Advantage by scouting the mining area, and the datapad up the steps.
- The formula: AoE to soften → Jae’s Final Shot → darts → Surge into a group. Run it in every room where enemies cluster.
- Control room: enemy health jumps to 58–64, and Cly can’t use her jetpack indoors. Enemies start spread out, so BR-1 hands out ability points instead of throwing grenades. They bunch up after a few turns.
- When there’s an exit, take it. The control room gives you one with eight or nine enemies still standing — leave.
- The final fight has no exit — and killing Visser doesn’t end it. You fight until every Coil enemy is dead, so save something for the cleanup.
- Visser boss: his high-evasion field is stripped by AoE — concussion grenade or Electro-Web shock. Single-target attacks will just miss.
- Jae’s Final Shot accounted for roughly 10–12 of my 62 kills. Bring her.
- The guns come down in a cutscene after the last enemy falls, and the Republic fleet covers your extraction.
- Finished with injuries on Cly (x2), Jae, and Hawks — no deaths.