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

by Alexander Freed

In order to ensure the security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire.

So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause. —Padmé Amidala

Bail Organa—Bail of House Prestor, Royal Consort to the Queen of Alderaan, father of the crown’s heir, once senator of the Galactic Republic and now senator of the Galactic Empire—went

All he could do to exorcise his ghosts was clear the names of the dead and hope for a better tomorrow.

He felt unworthy of his daughter—the last gift of another dead friend. The gift of a woman who’d died along with the Jedi, and who’d known a Jedi’s love. He felt unworthy of the Jedi. Their burden was nonetheless his. It had to be, lest it become Leia’s. He was her father, not her mentor or guardian, and he would do anything to carry that weight himself.

The Siege of Coruscant had left tens of thousands dead and millions without homes, but it hadn’t been an attack meant to terrorize and cow the civilian population.

“Every day, there’s some new edict from the grand vizier citing the Emperor’s authority, judicial appointments no one asked for, an entirely new plan for this regional governor business…they’re deliberately burying us in changes.”

For three years, they’d all lived in existential fear. Now Palpatine was Emperor and the galaxy was changing and it was all so ordinary. Except when it wasn’t.

Coruscant’s weather-control systems hadn’t been quite right since the Separatist attack, and like most of the city’s buildings, her housing block hadn’t been built for long stretches of precipitation.

Most of it, she imagined, wasn’t even Palpatine. It was his damned supporters, imperialist true believers and power-hungry sycophants alike, who were running wild. Who knew what Palpatine wanted—besides loyalty and control—when he’d given his beasts free rein?

People don’t change their minds in the face of evidence. People look for evidence that fits what they believe.

So he was alone with the truth. And left malnourished and unshared, that truth would seem less likely each day—until he would remember it only as a dream, having failed to act on its horrors.

Bail wondered what that meant to the clone, knowing that, in all likelihood, the Empire would commission no more of his kind—that every death brought his people closer to extinction.

Because Padmé’s burden and that of the Jedi would pass down to Leia if Bail didn’t act—Padmé’s burden, Obi-Wan’s burden, and the burden Anakin Skywalker had cast aside. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right for a child to grow up atoning for the failures of a generation.

They were a reminder that no matter how long ago a people had been lost, no matter how thoroughly they appeared to have been purged, something was always left behind.

Oof

“Here’s what Bail was right about. The Jedi were good. Like all of us, they failed to secure the peace. They were drawn into the war like everyone else, and their hands were not clean. If I can accept the blame for my part, they certainly earned their share, too. But”—she spat the word and nearly laughed at her own stridency—“for thousands of years they could have ruled the galaxy, and instead they chose to serve. They had their own vested interests, their own ways of politicking. But they believed their power came with an obligation to live humbly, to do good without asserting authority. “Maybe they failed to live up to those ideals in the end. I haven’t seen your evidence. What do I know about the extent of their betrayals? But they were good and they were ordinary and they were fallible, and even the most smug and arrogant were trying to hew to a tradition older than the Republic. They deserved better than to die at the hands of power-hungry old men who saw them as a threat. We deserved better than to lose another people, another religion, from the universe. All of us are poorer for their loss.”

The Jedi deserve justice…or at least a decent funeral.”

The yea vote was half a point ahead. Bail turned to the gold protocol droid beside him. The unit had once belonged to Padmé, though he’d had its memory wiped. That had been a necessity.