"And that's when I recorded and encoded that message you guys got. You know what happens from here." Buster concluded.

Dr Calvini was scribbling a last volley of notes. "Yes, we got your message. I was part of the team that reviewed it and voted to contact you. I was in the room when we radioed you, in fact."

"Yeah, the coordinates you gave me were just over a day's travel at max speed. But I couldn't safely handle max speed for most of it. In practice it wound up being almost two full days of continuous travel. I was up all day before I left and I was already getting tired, so that was when I broke open the medkit and started using the combat stimulants to keep me awake. I knew that I was a sitting duck as long as I was travelling out in the open, no way was I going to try and catch a nap or break for lunch." said the panda.

"What were you going to do if we didn't respond?" she asked.

"It's standard issue for walkers to have seven days of rations. I had used my tranquilizer brewing skills to make a peaceful pill. If I was still alive and nobody contacted me by the time the rations ran out, that was my way of making sure I didn't get taken back. It's in the ammo box in the overhead compartment of the Jerboa, alongside the Little B samples. Make sure they all get destroyed." he said.

Tap. Swipe. Tap. Finally, for the first time since the interrogation started, Dr. Calvini set her tablet down. She had been pacing around the room, and now she sat behind the desk across from Buster. She looked up at him appraisingly.

"Is there anything else you'd like to add?" she asked.

"Yeah. I wanted to thank you." he said with absolute sincerity.

Silence.

He waited. A part of him had hoped for a "thank you" back, even if rationally he knew that he deserved no such thing.

"Well, that's quite a story. It couldn't have been easy to relive all that, especially given the circumstances." she said.

"It was easier than I thought. It feels good to get to talk about this after carrying it around for a year." he smiled.

Buster was surprised at just how good it had felt to finally talk about it.

She didn't say anything. He waited, starting to get uncomfortable. Fidgeting in the longest stretch of silence since Dr. Calvini had first entered the room. In the calm of the moment, he suddenly felt very exhausted. He grabbed an energy drink, clicking it open and putting it to his lips for a nice big sip.

"Why didn't you tell me that you have a wife?" she asked.

Buster was caught completely off guard, comically so. His beady little eyes widened so much she could clearly see the vertical curve of his pupils. He did a legitimate spit-take. Fizzy brown liquid dripped off his tracking collar and seeped into the front of his scrubs as he had a coughing fit. He put his paws on his knees, bracing himself as he rode out the hacks and spasms.

Dr. Calvini didn't say anything. She just looked at him. Waited for him to answer. Her expression was difficult to read.

His expression was angry.

"She's not my wife anymore. We might still be married legally, but she left me during quarantine and she won't talk to me anymore. It seemed like a waste of time to try and file for divorce in the few weeks I had between Ryzeen and Martenwol. If anything, it might throw up a red flag on my personnel records." he said with a terseness that she had never heard from him before.

His round ears were no longer flat with exhaustion. They were starting to fold back. Aggression.

Dr. Calvini continued to push without mercy. "So you just told me this incredibly personal story about your most vulnerable moments, and you didn't think that was relevant at all? Don't you think it's important that you had someone back home you were talking to?"

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"What are you saying, you think I made this all up?" he asked with steel creeping in his voice.

"No, I don't think you made this up. I think you're an incredibly self-absorbed person and that everything you just told me is distorted by that." she said.

"Hey!" Buster protested, almost a bark.

"All this happened because you got your feelings hurt. You were perfectly happy to participate in the evil Empire because they treated you well and gave you a purpose. The moment things got hard and you had to experience a fraction of what countless people have experienced at your hands, everything has to go. You're taking your ball and you're going home." she was speaking at an even clip of staccato machinecannon fire, "But it's OK because you feel really bad about it, right?"

He was sinking into himself before her, saying nothing. His eyes were almost on the floor.

"You made hundreds of people suffer just so you could put your little cutesy-poo 'signature' on them. That's serial killer shit. And for what, because you got it in your head that we'd think it was just a coincidence otherwise? You're very good at rationalizing, but you are obviously a dangerously impulsive man with very bad judgment."

She moved in for the kill, "You talk a lot about wanting to help us. If we hurt your feelings, are you going to murder us all in our sleep too? What story will you tell then, to explain how it wasn't your fault and you had no choice?"

Dr. Calvini could see the struggle on his face. The side of his muzzle twitched.

He let out a long, slow breath and closed his eyes. He was still angry, and was trying to compose himself. He didn't seem to have much experience with that.

"My wife physically abused me almost the entire time we were together. I didn't want to start crying in the middle of this, and that's what always happens anytime I talk about her. That's why I didn't bring her up. This is about me being a war criminal. Me being the most divorced man on the planet is an extraneous detail at best. We'll have time to go over that later."

She paused. Her first instinct was to doubt him, but then she thought for a moment and regretted that instinct.

Still, Dr. Calvini outright glared at him. "So I tell you that I think you're being self-serving and dishonest, and your response is to tell me that it's OK to withhold information because it would hurt your feelings to talk about it? I thought scientists were supposed to be smart."

Buster began crying through his closed eyelids. Fat wet tears splashed down his ursine muzzle and onto the spit-up energy drink covering the front of his scrubs. His broad shoulders bounced like the Jerboa he had ridden in on.

"I want to make one thing very clear to you, Buster: I did not want to rescue you. I'm just part of a team, and my voice is one of many, so you are here in spite of me. You are a danger to us, not just because of your own instability and monstrous tendencies but because having you here is putting a giant target on our backs. It doesn't matter how much classified information we have if we get nuked from orbit before we can decrypt it. And it doesn't matter how bad you feel or how sorry you are if we're all dead."

The panda was very obviously trying to compose himself but the tears wouldn't stop and neither would Dr. Calvini. "Though on that note, I have some news that might make you feel a little better: we were going to assault Martenwol Base in a few weeks with suborbital support flying in from a neighboring system. Everyone you killed was going to die anyways. You did all this for nothing."

A sob. A sniff. Buster's shoulders stopped bouncing and he just sat there.

"Not for nothing." he said, "Every assault has casualties. You have friends who will live because they didn't have to fight that day. And I think you know that."

His face was still flat, depressed, but his voice was strained. "I think you're just trying to rile me up to see what I'll do as part of passing judgment on me. You've probably got an electrostatic actuator in this collar of mine and you're hoping I'll get irritable enough for you have an excuse to use it on me. I have to admit, I get why you did it this way. You did catch me off guard. But I'm too tired to be threatening right now."

"I think it's time for you to get some sleep, Mr. Harkness." Dr. Calvini said as she clicked her stylus back into her tablet.

She rose from her desk and knocked on the door to be let out, "The orderlies will be here to escort you to your room."

Buster's ears perked up and he lifted his gaze from the floor. The white slivers of his eyes were red from crying "Orderlies?"

"Oh, you don't know where you are? That makes sense. You were delirious for a lot of triage and admission. This hidden subterranean colony that we guided you to isn't an insurgency cell or a smuggling ring. Zed Steadman is a hospital." she explained, "It's where humans with severe injuries and chronic disabilities beyond what a field hospital could reasonably accommodate are shuttled off to. So they can recover in peace and quiet, safely out of the way, for however long they need."

The security deadbolt on the door clicked open and someone from the other side pulled it open for Dr. Calvini. She stood there for a moment in the threshold, staring back at him. Whatever was beyond that door was just as dark and unknowable to the panda as the view outside the open gate of Martenwol had been.

"That's the only reason we rescued you. You were lucky enough to contact the one cell full of people who won't refuse help to someone who needs it. And you definitely need a lot of help." she glared at him as she backed through the door, vanishing into shadow.

By the time the orderlies arrived, the panda was snoring with his chin resting on his collar. He was done being conscious for awhile.