Shortly following the Battle of Yavin, a clandestine operation on Geonosis was undertaken by the Sith Lord Darth Vader. Having lost the favor of the Emperor Palpatine, Vader enlisted the services of Doctor Chelli Aphra, a renegade archaeologist, along with the assassin droids BT-1 and 0-0-0. His goal was to create an army of absolutely loyal battle droids. Vader's team soon arrived on the planet Geonosis and infiltrated the lair of Karina, a Geonosian queen. Karina had been using a droid factory to manufacture battle droids as her "children," due to her inability to produce offspring following the sterilization of Geonosis. While BT-1 engaged the queen's B1-series battle droids, Vader and Aphra detached the queen from her factory. Aphra then utilized her starship, the Ark Angel, to create a large opening in the lair's roof, allowing Vader's starship to extract both the factory and the team using a massive crane. The captured droid factory subsequently began producing BX-series droid commandos for Vader, which he employed in an attack on the research base of a rival Imperial operative named Cylo.
During the Imperial Era under the Galactic Empire, the Empire sought to safeguard the secret of the Death Star, a mobile battle station capable of destroying entire planets, by sterilizing the planet Geonosis. This process resulted in the death of all Geonosian life, except for a single Geonosian drone known as "Klik-Klak" by the Lothal rebels of Phoenix Cell. The rebels encountered Klik-Klak during a mission to investigate Geonosis alongside rebel extremist Saw Gerrera and his Partisans in 2 BBY. An unhatched egg containing the last insectoid Geonosian queen also survived under Klik-Klak's protection. The egg eventually hatched, and the next Karina was born, ensuring the survival of the Geonosian species. However, Karina sustained injuries from Imperial bombs at a later time, rendering her infertile. By 0 ABY, the insane and sterile Geonosian Queen had established herself in a lair deep underground. Having reassembled some old droid facilities, she connected herself to a droid factory in an attempt to perpetuate her race, using the factory as a surrogate womb. The battle droids produced by the factory served as robotic representations of her lost people and her "children."
Later, amidst the Galactic Civil War between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, the Alliance destroyed the Death Star. A subsequent campaign by the Rebel Alliance involved an assault on Weapons Factory Alpha, the Empire's largest weapons factory located on the moon Cymoon 1. The Sith Lord Darth Vader was unable to prevent the Rebels from destroying the factory. Emperor [Palpatine](/article/darth_sidious], Vader's [Sith Master](/article/sith_master], became dissatisfied with Vader and demoted him for his failures at Yavin and Cymoon 1, placing him under the command of Grand General Cassio Tagge. Vader secretly hired two bounty hunters to locate two individuals: an Imperial operative whom Vader had observed working for Palpatine under suspicious circumstances, and the Rebel pilot who had destroyed both the Death Star and Weapons Factory Alpha. Subsequently, Vader met with Tagge aboard his Executor-class Star Dreadnaught Annihilator.
Vader and Tagge soon attacked and defeated a group of pirates who were utilizing custom droideka security droids supplied by Doctor Chelli Aphra. Impressed by the droidekas, Vader began searching for Aphra, eventually locating her on the asteroid space station Quarantine World III. The archaeologist also provided Vader with two assassin droids, 0-0-0—commonly known as Triple-Zero—and BT-1, also known as Beetee, to assist him. Vader revealed that he needed his own private resources to capture the operative and the Rebel: undeniably loyal battle droids. Aphra understood, and using information from the Droid Gotra, a criminal syndicate, she explained that a Geonosian queen had survived her homeworld's sterilization and possessed a droid factory. Vader agreed to her plan, and they departed for the old warzone of Geonosis aboard Aphra's starship, the Ark Angel.
En route to Geonosis, Vader brought in his J-type 327 Nubian starship to assist in the later stages of the mission. Soon after, the Ark Angel landed near the entrance to Karina's lair, and Aphra dispatched Triple-Zero and Beetee into a cavern to scout the most direct path to Karina's chamber. Vader had previously visited Geonosis several times during the Clone Wars when he was still a Jedi. Being on the red-desert world evoked painful memories of his deceased wife, so he instructed Aphra—who had been asking personal questions—to remain silent as they entered the catacombs to steal the droid factory.
Deeper within the tunnels, Beetee and Triple-Zero encountered several of the queen's B1-series battle droids, which Beetee promptly destroyed with its flamethrower while Triple-Zero insulted them in their native language. Aphra and Vader soon came across the carnage. Aphra examined the burned droids, noting "interesting tweaks" to the standard battle droid design, such as insectoid wings commonly used by Geonosians. Aphra inferred that these "tweaks" indicated that Karina viewed the droids not as mechanical beings, but as her own children. Vader and Aphra caught up with the two assassin droids and together they entered the great queen's chamber.
Vader leapt down to Karina and severed her connection to the droid factory—her "womb"—using his lightsaber. Despite the attack, she survived and deployed dozens of B1 battle droids, some capable of flight, to stop the Sith Lord. In response, Vader ordered Beetee to open fire. The droid unleashed a barrage of blasters, obliterating many of the droids while Vader cut down others. Meanwhile, Aphra prepared the Ark Angel's locator beacon to send it to the lair's ceiling. When the beacon's thrusters malfunctioned, Aphra jumped down to Vader's position to ask for assistance. Before she could finish, Vader used the Force to hurl the beacon to the roof with a flick of his finger, satisfying Aphra with the Sith Lord's abilities.
At Aphra's command, the Ark Angel bombarded the lair's roof, creating a massive hole and causing rocks to fall. However, Vader used the Force to create a protective "bubble" around himself and the doctor. Vader's Nubian starship then lowered a crane through the hole. Karina ordered her "children" to prevent the intruders' escape and retrieve her "womb." Aphra attached the crane to the droid factory while Vader fended off Karina's onslaught. Aphra questioned whether Vader's "pretty little" starship could extract the factory from its foundations, but Vader assured her that it could due to the "enhancements" he had made. Vader's chromium starship then lifted Vader, Aphra, and the factory into the skies of Geonosis, with Beetee and Triple-Zero following behind using Beetee's booster rockets.
Leaving Karina alive but as lifeless as the rest of Geonosis, Vader and his team returned to his Nubian, docked with the Ark Angel, and began calibrating the droid factory. Soon after, Beetee and Aphra successfully got it working, producing a single BX-series droid commando that Triple-Zero examined. Aphra remarked that Vader now possessed a private, off-the-grid army and no longer needed her services, expecting him to kill her. However, Vader believed she was still useful and informed her that she would live as long as he had a purpose for her. Shortly after, one of the bounty hunters Vader had hired, the Wookiee Krrsantan, arrived with a significant delivery.
Krrsantan had captured Cylo-IV and brought him aboard the Ark Angel, where Vader ordered Triple-Zero, a specialist in torture, to extract information about Palpatine's tasks for him. Triple-Zero succeeded in identifying the agent and the location of his research base, where assassins were being trained, possibly to replace Vader as the Emperor's enforcer, with Palpatine's approval. The protocol droid accidentally killed Cylo-IV during the interrogation and informed Vader of his findings. Vader ordered the course to be set for the base, and they departed immediately to storm the base using two platoons of the newly constructed commando droids. Subsequently, Vader continued to produce commando droids, deploying multiple platoons of them during various campaigns in the Empire's name, notably during the War on Shu-Torun, where the droids helped shift the battle in Vader's favor. Sometime after Aphra left Vader's service, she recorded an account of her time under the Sith Lord, including their mission to Geonosis.
The secret mission to Geonosis was first referenced in the third issue of the Marvel comic book series, Darth Vader, released on March 11, 2015. The mission itself first appeared in Darth Vader (2015) 4, which was released on April 8, 2015. It was written by Kieron Gillen, with art by Salvador Larroca. Upon the release of Darth Vader 4: Vader, Part IV, the Geonosian queen featured in the issue remained unnamed. However, in late 2016, the Star Wars canon source book Star Wars: Galactic Atlas was published. The book identified the Geonosian queen who fought against Darth Vader and Aphra as Karina.
Despite Darth Vader 4 depicting Karina's survival of Vader's attack and his acquisition of her droid factory, the Databank section of Star Wars Helmet Collection 15 incorrectly stated that she was killed by the Sith and that her factory was destroyed. The Databank in Star Wars Helmet Collection 19 later stated she was left as dead as Geonosis.