Vader pulled off his mask in the dark meditation room of the Executor, and the recycled air stung against scorched tissue. The room vibrated with the Star Destroyer's ceaseless machinery, and underneath it hung the sharp whiff of ozone that was attached to his armor like a second epidermis. In front of him, the blackness stretched out—a rent in existence that was a bridge for him to Shu'ulk'Tarath, the ancient Eldritch entity that had insinuated its way into all his schemes.
"Your work was well done," said the creature, its voice rolling like some chorus of the condemned through some bottomless pit. "Mara Jade was a worthy addition. But power is never absolute, and you know this. There is always more that needs claiming."
Vader nodded his head, his respirator's hiss filling the quiet. "The Dark Side needs it. Endless growth."
"Just so," the spirit sighed, its otherworldly eyes blazing through the darkness. "Your harem shall grow with power, a reflection of your mastery. The next has already been selected. One that was destined for your apprentice's trials yet more fitting for yourself. She is... Shaak Ti."
Even for Vader, the name held weight. Shaak Ti. The mysterious Togruta who had survived the Jedi Purge, who once had stood like a column of serenity amidst the turbulence of his childhood. Anakin had glimpsed her loveliness in flight, suppressed it beneath obligation. But Vader was not a man of control. Now, the mere idea of her—those montrals, that unruffled will—kindled a dark appetite. She had once been the Council's model of control. Now, she would be his model of domination.
**
Life aboard the Executor had its own rhythm, a mix of cold efficiency and hushed superstition. Officers didn't joke about Lord Vader, not out loud anyway, but they noticed things. They noticed the red-haired woman who walked half-a step behind him, who handled his orders with a precision that made bureaucracy feel like war. Officially, Mara Jade was just his assistant—another cog in the endless Imperial machine. Unofficially? The crew treated her like a storm warning: acknowledged from a distance, but never approached.
It was not her loveliness by itself, however, that turned heads in corridors where all else was durasteel grey. It was the manner that Vader bore her presence, the feeling that she was not tolerated, no, but owned. Men and women who had weathered battle and politics long enough to serve beneath the Dark Lord exchanged whispered comment in the mess halls. They talked of how his helmet would angle toward her with something that was not command and not indulgence. They talked of how she went into his chambers and did not come out until long afterwards, when much of the crew of her ship had worked its way into the sleepless pattern of hyperspace.
Gossip in the Empire was dangerous, yet it flourished where fear made it impermissible. And thus the whispers gained teeth. Mara Jade was no ordinary secretary—Vader's chosen, private consort, a clandestine mitigation for the galaxy's toughest fist.
Mara herself heard the whispers in pieces, wafting like smoke through the seams of the ship. She didn't react to them, not visibly. If the Emperor should hear any such gossip, her safety would be more at risk than she would ever dare think. But she couldn't help but notice the kernel of truth at the heart of it: she mattered. In a heart broken and remolded by the Dark Side, she became something she'd not expected—a connection, a reminder, a living shadow of the man once Anakin Skywalker.
And so she moved with precision, voice steady, gaze sharp, as though she were carved from the same stone as the ancient Sith statues. But beneath that mask of poise, Mara Jade carried the quiet knowledge that she was more than a whisper. She was his.
Starkiller was never invited aboard the Executor. It was always a personal summons by Vader to a personal station—one of those hidden fortresses scattered throughout the galaxy, where the Dark Lord need not answer to anyone other than him. The station was much like Vader: angular, steel, and taciturn, each hallway bare of ornament.
When Starkiller at last appeared before him, the voice proceeded in characteristic tones, grating and machine-like. "You have served me well, Starkiller. But you are not yet fully trained. I have a new mission for you."
Mara Jade was there, too. She didn't utter a word, but her presence spoke for her. Measuring. Watching. Her eyes retained that cold glint of the Core Worlds that would burn through any human's shields eventually if you looked long enough. Starkiller felt the weight of it—her silence, her closeness to Vader—and the question of just what she exactly was ate at him like a itch that he couldn't scratch.
Vader went on, his voice taking no debate. "You will journey to the shipyards at Nar Shaddaa. Your prey is Rahm Kota, a Jedi General that has evaded us for far too long. He is an icon of the defiance of the Old Republic—a relic that needs to be destroyed."
The name struck home. Starkiller knew it, knew the myths that went along. Kota was not some mission target; he was one of the few Jedi left that hadn't disappeared into myth or madness. But as the order took hold in his mind, Starkiller's thoughts kept drifting back to Mara Jade. She stood alongside Vader in a way no other did, and her eyes—those even, unreadable emerald eyes—seemed to know something Starkiller did not. She was a piece in a game Vader was not explaining, a player moving that Starkiller was not allowed to watch.
For a split second, he felt it: a sting of jealousy, or maybe just suspicion. Dangerous emotions for someone in his position. The Dark Side was quick to whisper into that space, filling it with thoughts that could poison loyalty. But Starkiller swallowed them down. To question Vader was suicide. To let doubt rule him was weakness. His path, at least for now, was obedience.
The doors to the chambers hissed open and closed behind him, and Vader and Mara Jade remained alone in the stillness. The silence between them was not empty—it was heavy, vibrant, swollen with all that was not said. Vader's gaze shifted toward her, his lenses darkening slightly as though to trap every spark of her mind. He felt her tension, her storm bottled beneath that flawless face of Imperial reserve.
And for a moment, the Dark Lord was less teacher sending away a pupil, and more a man standing amidst the consequences of a decision that only he comprehended. Vader spoke and broke the room's silence as a bolt of thunder. "Mara. I need to go to Felucia."
The word fell heavy between them. Felucia—rich, perilous, a world of twisted jungle and choking mists. Hearing it was enough to evoke visions of half-submerged Separatist hulks and bizarre, unreliable beasts that prowled beneath its canopy. Mara felt the room settle upon her shoulders as if the planet's foul humidity had penetrated the air already. What was he supposed to do there? The Jedi were fragmented, shattered, their Order already reduced to whispers in the dark. What else did Felucia have to offer him?
But she saw it—the gaze beneath the lenses of his mask. Hunger. Not the common sort, not a desire for yet another win that would satisfy Palpatine or torment before the Empire. Different. Individual. The Force informed her that much, humming at the corners of her consciousness. Whatever was out there for him at Felucia, it wasn't just a victory. It was something that Vader required.
"Another... conquest?" Mara asked, her voice escaping softer than she had planned, barely more than a sigh.
Vader didn't blink. His voice was level, controlled. "Shaak Ti. Jedi Master. Survivor of the Purge. Submission by her would be... significant."
The name hit Mara like a blade straight to the gut. Shaak Ti—of course she knew the stories, the calm strength, the quiet wisdom that had once made the Togruta one of the Republic's most respected Jedi. And now Vader sought her, not only as prey but as a prize. Mara's chest tightened, breath catching before she could stop it. Another woman. Another addition to his collection, his orbit. Was that all she was, then? Another piece in a line he drew for himself, to be placed, shifted, sacrificed at his whim?
The thought sank its claws into her, hard.
The exit was sudden, yet not unexpected. Mara Jade stood in the room long after the doors closed, the silence pressing down upon her like a weight. She was yet conscious of the rhythm of his breathing receding into memory. He had not sent her away out of weakness—it was practical, intentional. She was left with nothing more than the nagging awareness that she was a part of something greater that she was not yet equipped to visualize.
The Dark Lord's transport was a vehicle as cold and efficient as its master. No escort of stormtroopers, no TIE fighter escort slashing through the cosmos—just him, by himself. The ship entered hyperspace, and Vader's attention constricted. Felucia. A planet that Vader had never actually visited in both lives. A world that was home to a Jedi that had lived longer than she should have. Shaak Ti.
To Vader, she was no threat at all. His power was more significant than it was when the Jedi Order was still alive and well. But her survival bothered him. He had to know why. He had to know how. Curiosity, not reserve, drew him into that mushroom world.
Felucia rose beneath him like something alive, sprawling jungles lit by bioluminescent growths and towers of fungus that clawed toward the sky. The atmosphere was heavy, dense with spores, as if the planet itself resisted intruders. The shuttle cut through the haze, engines roaring against a world that seemed to breathe back.
Landing was less a maneuver than a test. The ground shook beneath the weight of the shuttle, and when the ramp descended, Vader emerged into a jungle that was alive and that smelled of heat and rot. The air was heavy and wet, thick with the scent of rot and alien flowers. Even there, far from the throne rooms and battle circles of the Empire, his presence was a disruption—a black wound in a place that was lush with life.
The Felucians didn't hesitate. Their shrieks split the air, high and animal, echoing through the jungle like the death cries of something already doomed. They came at him in a wave, bone-forged weapons sparking with the wild energy their shamans had pulled from the planet. To them, they were defenders. To Vader, they were nothing. He had fought Jedi, armies, entire wars. Compared to that, these warriors were a warm-up.
His lightsaber sprang to life in one smooth movement. A single great arc was sufficient to make their charge into a killing. The red blade sliced through them like a hurricane through dead trees, and the jungle seemed to wince. Each blow was efficient, ruthless, yet seemingly effortless. Screams went up and disappeared almost at once, lost beneath the whine of the saber.
But underneath the rhythm of the killing, something unexpected stirred. It wasn't rage, not exactly—it was older, buried deep under years of loss and chains. It was the old thrill, the pulse of combat that had once defined him. Long before the mask, before Sidious, before Padmé, he had loved this—the clarity of the fight, the focus it gave him. The chaos around him wasn't noise; it was freedom.
With each blow, it returned. Not as a remedy—never that—but as something more acute. The hurt remained, always would, but it was a knife in his hand now rather than a burden beneath his heart. The Force coursed through him as it once had than he cared to recall, direct, uncompromised by his master's shadow. For the very first time in more time than he was able to recollect, Vader did not merely feel strong. He felt alive.
The Felucian shamans brought out their last card and called forth the rancors. Massive, lumbering beasts tore through the jungle, every step trembling the ground. Their roars rent the air asunder, raw and primeval, the kind of voice that once sent entire villages cowering in fright. Vader didn't even bother to lift his sword.
He reached into the Force, cold and absolute, and clamped down on the beasts' minds. The rancors froze mid-charge, bellows twisting into strangled gasps. Their massive bodies convulsed as if the air itself had turned against them, eyes rolling white before they crumpled into the moss like discarded husks. The shockwave of silence that followed hit harder than their fall.
It was a nightmare come to life for the Felucians. Their revered guardians, the peak of this world's untamed power, fell dead in the ground without a blow struck. Even the jungle appeared to draw back, its typical symphony of alien flora halted, as if the world itself comprehended what had transpired.
Vader went on, black armor reflecting the subdued light beneath the canopy, a dark shape moving through blues and greens that were more vibrant than he was a part of. Each step pressed deeper into the ground, as though the ground itself bowed beneath his passage. The shamans shattered, falling prostate face down, wails emanating that once had been a chant. They knew it in their bones—the bond between their people, their world, and its animals was torn asunder by the power of a single man.