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the phantom menace
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"I wouldn't need to," he says.  "My people already control this facility.  But in any case, it would not be of much significance to you what happened to me after I killed you."

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She regards him, her eyes narrow, expression more enraged than fearful.

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"Are you stalling, your excellency?" Qui-Gon says.  "In the unlikely event that your guards manage to breach this room, I will be able to kill you before they stop me.  But I would not like it to come to that."

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She snorts. "You Jedi are soft. Weak. What are you to the Hutts but tiny flies?" She tilts her head. "But if your threat is as good as you promise... I will concede. I am no fool, and even a fly may sting at times."

She smiles, thinly. "But know this, little Jedi: your Republic's core has already rotted to a dark pit. Gardulla will outlast your precious Order, your vaunted moral law - and the only pity I feel is that you won't live to see it."

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"I will be disappointed if that is so," he says levelly.  "Would you like to record your confession now?"

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"I see no reason to delay, little Jedi."

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He retrieves, from a pocket, a handheld holorecorder, and activates it.

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She repeats the crimes he wishes her to confess to, evenly, gaze never wavering from him. She adds no embellishment, makes no attempt to justify herself.

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He beeps off the holorecorder once she's done.

"Thank you for your cooperation, your excellency."

 

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She sneers at him.

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"Now, we wait."  For Anakin to finish her job.

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Anakin is doing pretty well, she thinks - she's successfully mind tricked all the guards (...with only a few close calls), no one was at imminent risk of dying or in the murder gardens, and enough of the older slaves recognized her to sort of trust her. (It helps that they're probably dead if they stay. Terrifying murder children become a lot less terrifying when your alternative is Gardulla.)

She gets them onto one of the big enough ships - she has no problem stealing from Gardulla - and disables the ship's tracking devices.

Then - slip back to the control room, dodge the increasingly frantic computer workers, slip into the (already logged in, hah) seat of one of the consoles, and enter the password she put on the door controls. She only gets the (unguarded) door to the room Qui Gon and Gardulla are in open - though she's keeping to the spirit of the 'no death' challenge, so she sets a timer to open just the doors in five hours so no one gets stuck where they'll starve.

Then she hops down and heads back to the ship, whistling cheerfully once she's away from people.

She'll wait to take off until Qui Gon and Gardulla have boarded Qui Gon's speeder - theoretically some guards could still get over here, she wasn't able to perfectly shut down the corridors between Qui Gon and the bay, so she doesn't want them knowing that there's something suspicious going on.

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Qui-Gon lets his senses wash over the facility, keeping one mind's eye on the position of the guards that could theoretically intercept him and Gardulla.  He moves purposefully but not over-quick, keeping up the image of someone who's already won.  They reach his speeder without any problems; he lets Anakin know they're on the move, and departs out into the desert, toward the ship.

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She takes off, laughing, her ship following in his wake.

None of the guards manage to mount a pursuit before they've reached their destination.

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Time to get off Tatooine.

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Kelié's magnificent star-yacht docks with the ship Anakin stole while they're both in orbit.  Qui-Gon sets his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi, and a few of Kelié's guards, to keep watch on Gardulla in her room.

He and one of her pilots go to speak with Anakin, wearing the first genuine smile he's worn in a good while.

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She's helping people get settled, now that they're docked. (She's unsure, right now, if they'll be staying here or going to Kelié's ship, so they're just getting families reunited, everyone provided with at least some water and food or medicine if they're in high need, and triage on lingering injuries done for now.) (Shmi and the elders are actually doing a lot of this work, but Anakin has a way with the other children, and she can pretty accurately guess at what anyone quasi-conscious or unable to communicate needs.)

"Hey!" Anakin chirps when Qui-Gon finds her - between tasks, fortunately, she hasn't had the time to get very involved in anything yet.

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"It's good to see you again," he says.  "I hope everything went smoothly on your end?"

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"Mostly, yeah. Took a bit of pushing to convince a couple guards they really felt like dropping their weapons and going to the canteen for a drink... But I managed. Nobody got injured in getting out, and we were able to bring along everyone already injured or unable to walk, too."

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"I'm glad," he says.  "Do you need any help?"

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"If you've got medical supplies, that'd be nice. Or extra food and water - we grabbed as many rations and water packs as we could on our way out, and the ship had a store already, but there's a lot of us here who were already running at 'pretty thirsty.'"

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"We have some spare, though not many," he says.  "I'll see what I can do."  He retrieves his communicator and directs whoever's on the other end to bring over some spare supplies.

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"We can hold out for a bit, still. And we're used to rationing. Guess it depends on how far we're going..."

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"The trip should take less than a week."

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"Yeah, we can manage that even with keeping a small buffer in case something goes wrong..."

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