Sometimes it was just the low roar of the engines on a Star Destroyer between her temples. Other times, it was as if the Darksaber itself was firing into her skull. It pounded, roared, raged, whispered, and above all, commanded her in her subconscious. It tormented her, even threatened her sanity sometimes, and always kept her nerves on edge.

Even in her dreams, she could still hear it. It was etched into her brain as clearly as any document on a datapad, but roared at her as relentlessly as a krayt dragon. It was the last command she had been given by her Master.

"YOU WILL KILL DARTH VADER."

Mara Jade's whole life had been devoted to the Emperor. Though she was young still, by many accounts, her life's experience totalled up to several lifetimes for any normal person. She had been the Emperor's Hand, roaming the Galaxy doing his will. Raised from a child by Lord Sidious, she had learned the ways of the Force while at the same time honing her combat and infiltration skills. Darth Vader aside, she was one of the deadliest weapons that the Emperor had ever had in his arsenal. At times she perhaps came close to equalling Lord Vader himself, which had caused a subtle but noticeable rivalry between them.

The command itself was not to her disliking; she had been an assasin before, and it would not be unpleasant to dispose of the man who had threatened her so many times, even as a child. It was the relentlessness with which her Master's voice drove into her mind day after day that was maddening her. She had seen vividly in her mind the betrayal of the Emperor, as Vader and Luke Skywalker, a former hero of the Rebellion, rose up and slew her Master. She had fled for a while, but soon the Emperor's last command overwhelmed her, drawing her slowly along a path of insanity. She had become unstable, and no matter what she did she couldn't escape her destiny: killing Lord Vader.

For a while after the Emperor's death, she tried to get as far away from the Empire as she could. She had no doubt that now, without the protection of the Emperor, Vader would see her as a threat and try to eliminate her, using the full force of the Empire against her. She had taken up with some remnants of the Black Sun, who had formed their own organized crime syndicate (nowhere near as powerful as the original Black Sun, but an organization far from the grasp of Empire nonetheless). With the Black Sun, Mara worked as a covert operative and assasin, helping to build the organization back up to some semblance of its former power.

After working with the Black Sun for over a year, Mara had become a hard, bitter woman often on the brink of insanity. She never rose in the ranks of the organization, preferring to avoid administrative duties and stick to what she did best. The other members of the syndicate were wary of her, even feared her a little; the deadly assasin with a death wish was not one to be taken lightly. During this time, Mara often considered ending her own life, but never could go through with it. Perhaps it was the result of leaving the Emperor's last command unfulfilled, or perhaps it was the Force, but she continued along her path until a turn of events gave her reason to believe she might be able to escape the creeping insanity.

The planet Wayland was wholly unremarkable to most people, including Black Sun operative Mara Jade. Her assignment had been to meet a potential client and arrange for a hit, using the out-of-the-way planet as a neutral meeting place. When she arrived, however, she quickly found that all was not as had been planned. On the planet, she was quickly ambushed by Imperial forces on the planet under the leadership of Grand Admiral Thrawn himself. Though she was skilled and took many stormtroopers'lives in the struggle, eventually she was overwhelmed by sheer numbers. She prepared for her execution, or perhaps worse, at the hands of the servants of the two Dark Lords of the Sith, but to her surprise found that Thrawn had not made his masters aware of his ambush.

Thrawn had discovered that the Emperor had a chache of special technology hidden away in Mount Tantiss on Wayland, and intended to use it for the good of the Empire. However, he also was aware of the threats in the Unknown Regions, and beyond, so he had already begun construction the Hand of Thrawn, and planned to use the Emperor's technology without making his masters aware. To get into Mount Tantiss, Thrawn knew he would need to get past the mad clone Joruus C'baoth, and had "enlisted" Mara to do the job for him. Long aware of her history as the Emperor's Hand, Thrawn relied on Mara's skill in the Force to topple the mad Dark Jedi Master, and gain entrance to the storehouse. The struggle was intense, and only Mara's increased physical training kept her alive during the battle, but in the end she emerged victorious. Thrawn released Mara, and inadvertantly gave her a way to regain her former life: inside Mount Tantiss, Mara Jade learned of the planet Byss, and of the Emperor's plans to resurrect himself.

Following her near-defeat at Wayland, Mara knew she could not face Vader until she had gained a greater mastery over her Force abilities. Though she continued to work for the Black Sun, she began searching out any information she could on the Jedi. Finally, she encountered a woman, Leia Organa, who had begun training students in the ways of the Force. When Leia realized the woman's potential, she was excited at the prospect of training a student. She sensed the bitterness and the conflict within her, but thought she could turn her back fully to the Light.

Fortunately for Mara, she succeeded somewhat. Mara proved to be a quick learner, and a disciplined student. With the help of the Force, Mara warded off the madness which had been creeping up on her for the last several years, and dulled the roar of the Emperor's last command to a muted buzz in the back of her mind. Mara stabalized, and trained well until reaching Knighthood. Though Leia had reservations about Mara Jade's bitterness, Mara proved to be willing to aid in the Jedi cause nonetheless. The power of the Light side still shone in these dark times, and Mara molded herself back into a whole person with the help of the Force.

Mara never took a Padawan of her own, and chafed under the tutelege of Leia Organa. Always the independant one, she preferred the long training sessions which isolated her and left her to piece her fragmented mind back together again. When she finally had become a whole person again, she no longer felt the drive to fulfill her former Master's command, and continue on as one of Leia's covert Jedi Knights for many years. She was somewhat of a loner, preferring to work without help and often striking off for weeks at a time without saying a word to any of her companions. While all of Leia's Jedi were shadows during this time, Mara Jade was almost a ghost, rarely seen and even then for no more than a few moments. She became something of a phantom, disappearing and reemerging only to check in with Leia from time to time.

It was during one of these rare check-ins that Leia begged Mara to take on an assignment for her. Chewbacca, a long-time friend of Master Organa, was going to Tatooine to try and rescure Leia's former love, Han Solo. While normally Mara was loathe to partner up, much less for a mission that didn't seem to serve the greater good, she accepted the mission anyways. Master Organa had practicaly pleaded with her to undetrake the rescue mission, and she could not deny that she owed the woman something for drawing her away from her bitter madness. She set off for the planet Tatooine with Chewbacca aboard the Falcon, and partcipated in one of the most horrible failures of her life. When she and Chewie returned from the debacle, Mara's still-fragile sanity began to fade a little.

When she learned of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker's departure for the planet Byss, however, her sanity abandoned here completely. Though she had long remained disciplined and steadfast, her recent defeat on Tatooine had worn away some of her cautiousness and left her as reckless as she had been before her Jedi training. She took off for Byss, not knowing what her true goal was, only knowing that on that planet was where her destiny awaited.

She arrived much later than they did, but the information she had gathered from Mount Tantiss led her right where she wanted to go. Though the odds were against her, Mara Jade descended upon the planet and headed for the Emperor's clone vats, intending to awaken her former Master. Though her years of Jedi training had convinced her that Palpatine had been evil, in the weeks since her failure on Tatooine she had reverted to her ways of thinking during the first months after Lord Sidious' death. Her mind thrummed with one phrase.

"YOU WILL KILL DARTH VADER."

There, amidst the clone vats, she encountered the man who she had hated for many long years, the man whom she was intended to kill, Vader. They clashed in a furious battle of lightsabers and the Force, smashing several of the Spaarti cloning cylinders during the struggle, and nearly destroying some of the vital systems in the clone laboratory. As lightsabers flashed and Mara's screams reverberated throughout the labs, Luke Skywalker watched, and waited, in the corner of the room. He followed the Jade woman's mind, and at a critical moment fooled her with a false vision, causing her to slice through the last remaining clone vat and destroy the lab's life support systems. This final act was all it took to break the woman's mind, and send her shattered consciousness into a bleak fugue. The battle was over, and Mara Jade had lost.

But rather than killing this assasin, Skywalker convinced his father to allow him to keep the woman for his studies, rebuilding her mind and molding it to serve their dark purposes. Mara Jade's mind would never be whole again, and she became a test subject for Darth Gadrel's Force manipulations, remaining his slave and servant of the Dark Empire.