RSS
A rescue mission is a classic adventure setup. It's easy to throw into almost any campaign, and it can be triggered by lots of events that the heroes might already have had a hand in. Any sort of conflict can lead to captives being taken and thus requiring rescue.
Heck, a rescue mission is responsible for splitting the Fellowship of the Ring and drives much of the plot thread following Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. Rescue is almost the entire plot of The Princess Bride. And, uh... there's also a little thing driving the first half of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
Rescue plots are so diverse and useful that TV Tropes has not only a page about them, but a whole index listing 90* separate rescue types and variants that you can use to spice up your adventures.
* As of this writing.
Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)
[Keybounce's comments will appear here when received.]
Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)
Hm. I'd been thinking the Peace Moon was the entirety of the place, but having a military base on it makes sense now that it's mentioned. Having more than just maintenance crews and giant reactors would be necessary for a large military installation that could expect to be attacked. And even before the weapon was operational, a defense force of some sort would be necessary to keep around.
Having the defector provide all the information they can is a good idea; if the info can be verified first. However, Finn doesn't look like he's capable of coming up with anything convincing on the fly so that would be a point in favor of believing what he says. I wonder how close this scene is to the movie. They're probably talking about getting Rey back, but they'd have to be talking about the Peace Moon as well right? The fact that nobody is communicating with the Republic any longer should be a good indicator that something happened to it, plus the fact that everyone saw that weird red light in the sky should raise some alarms.
Transcript
Leia: What about Rey? How are we going to rescue her?
Finn: Well... I dunno if that’s—
Leia: I sent her on that mission to Tatooine. Rey needs to get home safely.
Kaydel Ko Connix: {mumbling in background} “Rey”, “Rey”, “Rey”. She always gets the good missions.
Finn: If they’ve taken her to the Endor base, then—
Leia: You can tell us everything you know.
Leia: That will prove your loyalty to the Resistance.
Kaydel Ko Connix: {in background} Wish I could get field missions. But I guess only the General’s daughter gets those.
Finn: Uh... sure, but... infiltrating the base would be a suicide mission.
Allan: Not a problem! I’ve survived dozens of those!