Star Wars: The Mask of Fear (Reign of the Empire) (Star Wars: Reign of the Empire Book 1)

by Alexander Freed

“Where do you want to begin?” he asked. It was a gracious way of declaring, I’m not saying a word until you explain yourself.

This was the intoxicating thing about spycraft, the moments where instinct and foresight came together, the moments when—Haki recalled the words of a mentor—you stood in a dark hallway seeking a door to somewhere new. You might not know how many doors there were or where exactly to find them or even where they would lead you, but your mastery of the craft would guide you. An hour before, she couldn’t have said what door she’d expected the senator to open. But now she was close and knew what she hoped to accomplish.

“When a person depends upon their neighbor for assistance during the harvest—when strangers are few and familial ties bind the farmer to the freighter captain—the greatest danger is shunning or exile. Mollifying your peers becomes a matter of survival. You have an incentive to iron out differences, or if necessary to bury any radical beliefs that would put you at odds with your community. “In a city of millions, however, a person may build a tailor-made community inside the larger organism. Anger your neighbor and you may move in with a friend. Become an outcast among your co-workers and you may take a job with a competitor. Diverse arts and philosophies may flourish without the flattening effect of more tight-knit communities, and differences may be celebrated. Yet a lack of common ties can also cause neighbors to see one another as rivals. Ideological opponents can be dismissed without need for engagement. And good people may slip through the cracks, lost in the chaos and written off as someone else’s problem.”

inchoate

Ord Mantell.

We all knew it was a lie, but some folks decided to believe anyway, because it was easier than arguing.

Soujen considered, and again he was reminded of how introspection rankled his sensibilities. Introspection was the first step toward hypocrisy. Yet he could overcome this.

Perhaps her insistence on peaceful solutions had left Chandrila weak and exposed.

So what if Imperial Intelligence or the security bureau had searched her lodgings, not even bothering to conceal their work? It was better than murderers coming for her, better than being arrested. It was life now.

They were thinking about Separatist brutality, he knew. They were thinking about loved ones killed, everything they’d done to stop Soujen and his kind, and now they were ready to take up the weapons of their enemy.

He had known none of them intimately, but scant encounters had made him a better man.

He had her, not by manipulation or lies but by empathy and curiosity. Things that made it harder to kill a hostage.

Eliminate the complexity. Complexity results in failure. Simplify the mission.

Like so much else, the memories of his friends were slipping away, and they would never be reclaimed.