Dara Syn was born on the planet Alderaan.  Living with her parents and younger brother Trego, the family had a comfortable life working for the Royal House Panteer... until the Sith Empire came.

After the Queen of Alderaan was assassinated by agents of House Rist (rumored to be employed by House Thul, the now ruling house and Imperial lapdogs of Alderann), the Empire sent its troops in to round up former supporters of Panteer and herd them into 're-education' facilities.  The young Dara managed to escape with the help of a freighter pilot/smuggler named Niko Okarr, but the rest of her family were not so lucky.

Feeling  guilty for not being able to rescue Dara's family along with the girl, Okarr raised her as if she were his own daughter.  Throughout the years Okarr taught her the 'tricks of the trade' a good pilot needed to keep his/her head out of the proverbial hangman's noose.  As time went by, Niko decided he was getting too old for the privateer's life and sat down one day with his 'daughter' to discuss his retirement.  Unable to bring himself to sell his beloved (and highly modified) Corellian XS light freighter, he passed the torch on to the one person he loved more than any other, Dara.

A few months after taking over the 'family business', Dara found herself needing an extra hand with running the ship and other duties.  As luck would have it, while making a delivery of questionable goods to a used droid dealer on Nar Shaddaa, she came upon the perfect assistant... an older model D9-M4 Imperial Hunter/Killer droid.  The shop's owner explained he had found the deactivated droid  in a scrap heap in the Red Light district, brought it back to the shop and reprogrammed its AI to serve as a combination protocol/astromech droid.  Explaining further that he was able to remove most of the droid's HK programming, there were still some remnants he couldn't, especially the tendency of the droid to refer to all organic lifeforms as 'Meatbags'.  Using bargaining skills taught her by Niko (plus a few of her own charms), Dara was able to obtain D9 as compensation for charging 50% of her normal fees and no guarantee the droid wouldn't revert to its old programming and kill her.

Turned out, D9 immediately imprinted upon his new owner without any problems.  A more loyal companion and fiercer protector could not have been asked for and he even stopped referring to Dara as 'Meatbag' after the first two weeks... though other organics are still fair game.