25th February will see the much-anticipated release of Reign of the Empire: The Mask of Fear by author Alexander Freed, set during the first year of Emperor Palpatine’s reign and allowing us a look into the motivations of three key rebellion figures – Mon Mothma, Bail Organa and Saw Gerrera. The first entry in a trilogy of books, The Mask of Fear focuses on Mon Mothma, and here we’re treated to an excerpt as Mothma meets with an old friend and ally.
I promise, it’s entirely adequate,” Lud Morrai said, pushing the gravy toward Mon. “Wipe the taste of Hesperidium right out of your mouth.” Mon laughed and shook her head, but Lud insisted, and she scooped up a helping with her flatbread and ate gracelessly. The rich, savory sauce dripped onto her chin. She barely glanced about to check whether anyone had seen.
Lud had been solicitous toward her since Zhuna’s murder, leaving daily messages of support and offering invitations to meals, without insisting and without regard for how complicated his own schedule was. Mon had said no until she’d said yes, and now, sitting with him, she remembered what it was like to have a friend.
She didn’t have many—not outside politics beyond a few classmates she saw once or twice a year and not many in politics, either.
Maybe that was why she’d stayed with Perrin all this time. She looked up from the plate, caught Lud’s gaze, and rebuked herself. Those are dangerous thoughts.
“You really can’t tell anyone about Hesperidium,” she said. “Honestly, I shouldn’t have mentioned—”
“I heard yesterday. There was speculation about you and the Commerce Guild . . . ?”
She sighed. She trusted Lud, but she had no intention of telling him about Cornade and the others, and she didn’t intend to let him guess who she’d met through process of elimination. “Can we drop it?”
“Of course,” Lud said. “But can I say one thing? You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m not asking anything. I just want—”
“There’s a reason we don’t talk about our projects.”
He waved off her objection. “Two minutes. That’s all.”
She looked around the restaurant. It was packed with the lunch crowd, maybe a hundred dockworkers jostling over trays. “Two minutes,” she said.
Lud steepled his hands and gathered his thoughts. “You’re whipping votes outside your usual coalition. Everyone knows that, and certainly I respect the effort. It’s hard enough keeping my allies in line—I can’t imagine winning over my opponents.
“However . . . the people you’re dealing with? If you’re—and again, I’m not asking you to give anything away. I won’t even watch your expression.” He turned to the stained wall as his voice fell to a murmur. “If you’re building a coalition to oppose the administration, I wish you’d consider the optics.”
“What optics?” she asked.
“The optics of you assembling a group of the most privileged people in the galaxy. Corporate tycoons, senators from royal families and the wealthiest worlds in the Core—”
“As opposed to humble men like yourself, from working-class worlds like Troithe?”
He scowled. “You promised me two minutes.”
Mon held up her hands in surrender.
“Palpatine is a populist. The reason he appeals to worlds like Troithe is because people there see him making real changes in their lives. He cracked down on the corporations. He ended the war. He’s promising that the era of out-of-touch politicians and twelfth-generation nobility shaping the galaxy for their own benefit is over.”
“He’s—” she began. He’s not giving power back to ordinary people.
He’s only shifting who holds it. He and his cronies don’t care about your world any more than they care about mine.
She stayed silent.
“What you’re doing,” Lud said, “is only proving him right. The Delegation of Two Thousand was . . . well, it was mad and foolish and an utter failure, but at least it was idealistic. It was built on principle, and people saw that even if they didn’t understand what the principle was. Now I know you’re acting in what you believe is the best interest of democracy. I know you, Mon. But—”
“But my coalition of the rich and ultra-powerful symbolizes what everyone hated about the Republic, is that right?” She pushed her chair back, and Lud turned toward her. “I think your two minutes are up.”
He called her name and apologized as she stood. She told him it was fine, that she just had business back at the Senate and she’d stayed too long already. She looked away when she saw the hurt in his eyes and hurried out of the restaurant, telling herself, He’s not the one who gets to be injured, and he’s not the one who gets to be angry.
She shouldn’t have cared what he thought.
The commercial spacedocks were packed at this hour, and she had to push through throngs of people and past hoversleds laden with crates and cages and boxes of produce. She should’ve had security with her. The threats on her life were coming in rapidly since Zhuna’s death and Mon’s “politicization” of the tragedy. But she hadn’t wanted anyone looking over her shoulder while she met Lud—at least, anyone other than the usual spies, whom she assumed were tracking her every move and who, if she was lucky, might bother to intervene if she was attacked.
As she maneuvered toward the tram, she nearly bowled over a squat man in a farmer’s cloak and cowl. She apologized instinctively as he caught her wrist to keep from falling. But he hurried on, and she managed to board her car moments before it sped off for the Federal District.
She didn’t think of the encounter again until she was back in her office, trying to comprehend the way Zhuna’s replacement had configured her calendar. Her wrist itched, and she rolled up the white of her sleeve to see if she’d somehow scratched herself.
There was a rash forming, blotchy and red, with each splotch centered on a darker brown dot. She began to scratch, then abruptly stopped as she saw the red blotches spreading like a stain. The brown centers grew larger and darker. She thrust her arm away, as if she could distance herself from whatever was multiplying within her flesh; at the same time she cried sharply and stumbled away from her desk.
She needed a medic. She’d been infected, she thought, poisoned when she’d boarded the tram. But there was no pain, only the faint itch, and even that hadn’t increased in intensity. The spread of the blotches slowed, creeping to a stop. The dark spots were bleeding together, seeming to form patterns.
There were words appearing on her flesh, no larger than the labels on a control panel: TYCHON NULVOLIO WILL SPEAK TO YOU.
Excerpt from Star Wars: The Mask of Fear (Reign of the Empire) by Alexander Freed. © 2025 by Star Wars. Published by Random House Worlds, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Stay tuned for our review of the novel right here on the site.
