This was Dr. Calvini's first time seeing Buster Harkness in person.
She had helped analyze his transmission when he sent out an unconditional surrender. The first time she had seen him, he looked determined but mortified on the screen.
She had reviewed the footage from the cave entrance when he arrived at their doorstep days later. He had stumbled out of the Jerboa's cockpit in a haze of sleep deprivation and amphetamines, looking and sounding more like a feral animal than a thinking one. He towered over even the biggest human guards in the footage.
Now just hours later, there he was sitting in front of her. The panda had taken a seat on a hospital sofa; they had first tried lashing two folding chairs together, and the lightweight metal had bent and buckled beneath him when he sat. His enormous black furry paw was unrestrained, cradling a can of diet soda as the claw of his thumb tapped out an idle nervous rhythm on the aluminum. The amphetamine was leaving his system, one nervous twitch at a time.
A hastily-repurposed hospital conference room formed his makeshift interrogation cell. She was looking at him through the small window in the door. When she finally opened it, the enormous panda man lifted his gaze from the soda can to look at her. Even seated on the sofa, he still looked down at her as she walked up to him.
"Sorry about the chairs." he said, "I wish I could say it won't happen again. But I'm not used to being in human spaces so I'm probably going to break a few more things before we figure this out. I'm trying as best I can."
Buster's voice sounded flat and measured, not at all like the anxious and quavering broadcast that had been his introduction to her world. The panda was obviously exhausted, his high voice forming words low in his throat as he pushed them out with as little energy necessary. His gaze lowered, avoiding hers.
"You sound awful." She observed with a testing barb, "Are you sure you don't want to get some rest first? Nobody's pursuing you, you're safe now. You look very tired."
He looked back up to meet her gaze again, eyes shining with restrained tears.
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"I am very tired. Too tired to try and think three steps ahead. Too tired to catch myself and not answer if it will make me look bad. Too tired to get angry and storm off when I get uncomfortable."
He took a sip. "As tired as I am, I'm more tired of being like this. And I know that if you give me a good night's sleep my defenses are going to go right back up in the morning. The story you get then won't be as pure as what you'll get right now. I hope you'll consider that a sign of goodwill, that I'm willing to incriminate myself like this."
He lifted the can back to his muzzle and drained it. The light from the red diode on his tracking collar reflected off the aluminum.
"Besides, I know enough about stimulants to know that I'm not going to be able to sleep for awhile. No matter how tired I feel. I have a lot of making-up to do, 'figure I better get started on that while I'm not doing anything else." he said.
Dr. Calvini gave a nod. "Well, I appreciate that. Whenever you're ready to stop, let me know. You're not going to be free to go for awhile, if ever. But this will not be a forced interrogation as long as you continue to cooperate in good faith. If you need something to eat or drink, I can have someone bring you something; let me know if you have any dietary restrictions and we can accommodate them. The door to the bathroom is right there whenever you need to take a break. There are cameras there, there, and here" she gestured towards each one in turn, "and the entire room is wired for sound. I'll be taking notes on my tablet, and at all times there is at least one live observer viewing remotely. As a voluntary prisoner of war you have forfeit your rights to privacy, but I thought you would appreciate knowing all that up front."
"I do. Thank you. It's wild, I didn't expect to be treated better as a prisoner of war than I was by my own people! Back on the base, half the guys thought the cameras were decoys because we couldn't get any info about who was using them." Buster said.
Dr. Calvini smiled. She was prepared for this traitorous panda to be a problem. "I'm sorry about the tracking collar. Normally we use ankle units but obviously none of them were big enough for you. We had to use one intended for tracking livestock." she said.
Now it was Buster's turn to smile. It was big and toothy, his round cheeks bunching up around his blunt ursine muzzle. "I get it. Maybe I could help you guys make an anklet in my size after this is over? At least you had some Nakunan-sized scrubs even if they aren't my color, this would be real awkward otherwise."
He lowered his gaze once more to toss the empty soda can into the trash. Dr. Calvini popped the stylus out of her tablet and opened up her notes.
"Do you want to start with the mass murder, or start from the beginning and work up to it?" Buster asked with the cadence of a joke, while still legitimately asking the question.
"Start from the beginning."