By the time Buster had hopped back to Martenwol, the sun had peaked in the sky. He decided to steer clear of Kincade's ship, not knowing what kind of automated defenses and booby traps might be onboard. Besides, he didn't know how to fly. It had taken him weeks to learn the Jerboa simulator, he doubted it would be any easier to learn to pilot a spacecraft.

He was supposed to contact Zed Steadman immediately if he made out it out in one piece, but now that the adrenaline had left his system he was exhausted. He felt like it wouldn't hurt to at least enjoy the rest of the day before getting to work on whatever was coming next.

He had barely dismounted from the Jerboa before he was hitting his vaporizer. He could feel his nerves getting raw and the images of the fight start to calcify in his memory. He kept hitting it all during the walk to cafeteria, sitting down to a late lunch of chili from a pouch in a giggly haze.

He idly pulled out his communicator and noticed a text message from Petro: Good luck, Big B! Can I ask you a question? Call me as soon as you get back. It's important.

Even through the cannabis haze, Buster felt like something was off. Petro was never this formal in his texts, and he didn't like doing voice calls. Most importantly, he avidly complained about people asking if they can ask a question and would never do so on his own. An impostor? No, Petro was too paranoid about security for anyone else to get access to his encryption. He must be worried about the message getting intercepted or screened, text encryption isn't as secure as voice and video.

Well, if it's important...

Buster dialed up his friend.

"Petro! Buddy! What's up?" Buster asked, trying not to sound too high.

"Buster! Is everything OK? Are the Freelancers gone?" Petro asked, relieved to hear his friend's voice again.

"Oh yeah, they're gone. I was going to surrender but then I got the feeling that they weren't going to take me alive regardless so I blew them up." Buster said with a small hmph at the end as he suppressed a giggle.

Blew her sky high!

"That's great! I'm sure it's a good story, can't wait to hear it. But things are going down fast here at Zed Steadman." Petro's high voice rang out clearly over the connection, making the uninhibited panda sigh happily.

"I was worried I would never hear you again. I love you, Petro. I wish I had said that before I left." the panda said with great warmth.

"I love you too, buddy. A lot of people here love you. That's why I needed to get in touch before you radioed back to base." Petro explained.

Buster was glad he was still high, he felt like he had a head start on whatever bad news was coming. "Sounds serious. Fill me in."

"Zed Steadman is disbanding. The only reason we stayed here so long after the Martenwol Massacre was because of the blockade. The board has had suspicions for awhile now that the blockade is either heavily flawed or entirely illusory. The Freelancers touching down without incident this morning was confirmation of that, and the board has agreed to begin evacuating. They're scheduling the transport ships now, everyone is going to be gone within a few weeks."

Buster had already prepared himself for never seeing his new home again. Now that Kincade and Mirabelle were gone, he had finally started entertaining thoughts of returning. Even if he had to live in a cell, at least he would have friends and support. The thought of losing that all over again was already making his heart sink.

"Oh no." the panda said simply.

"Yeah. And I took a look at the evacuation schedules, they've got you on a prison transport ship. You're going to be a prisoner of war. I don't know how much of that is the board's call, but it appears a decision has been made. If you come back, you're being put away behind bars. Probably for the rest of your life, there's not really an appeals process for POWs." Petro continued.

As Buster listened, he idly fidgeted. Scratching the underside of one round ursine cheek, his paw brushed the tracking collar. "Oh fuck, I have a tracking collar. They're listening to me right now." he remembered, really wishing he wasn't so high at this specific moment.

Petro laughed. It made Buster really happy to get to hear it again. The human had a great barking laugh, and the panda was happy that he heard it so often whenever they were together. "It's OK, Sophear's people handle that and she's taking care of it."

Buster was confused. "She's taking care of it?"

Now Petro was excited. "Yeah, she's not happy with the decision. She can't do anything about it officially but she came to me and we worked out a plan."

Buster's mind was racing to keep up with everything. "What kind of plan?"

"Look, you don't have a lot of experience with long-term care. Zed Steadman was kind of an experiment. It was wonderful, but it's ending and I'm going to get shuffled back into the system I've spent my whole life trying to avoid. I'm not going back to being treated like an invalid by battlefield medics in a place where the pseudonet updates are measured in minutes. I have Type IV osteogenesis imperfecta: with my life expectancy I have twenty years left at best and that's not how I want to spend them. I want out, and I want to take you with me." Petro explained.

Buster was speechless.

"I know how to fly, I taught myself when I was a teenager because the simulators were fun to crack. Sophear is organizing a shuttle to fly me over to Martenwol now that we're ignoring the blockade and air transport is open again. I can figure out how to fly whatever Kincade came in on in an afternoon, with your help. After that, I have some friends we can meet up with outside the frontier worlds. That's the nice thing about being a programmer, you're always in demand!" Petro cackled, very pleased with himself.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

The panda looked less amused. "That sounds like it would be a lot of fun. But I can't go, the whole reason I came here was for humans to pass judgment on me. If they think I belong in prison, so be it. If I run away then I'm just doing exactly what Dr. Calvini said I would, it would prove her right about everything she suspected."

Petro rolled his eyes. "Humans aren't a monolith any more than pandas are. We disagree and we make mistakes just like everyone else. And they're making a mistake condemning you to a life of forced labor and confinement when you could be out doing a lot more good for the universe. Like, say, working as my assistant?"

Buster lowered his eyes, his shoulders sloping down. "Thanks, that's nice of you to say. But I don't agree, and I'm not running anymore."

"You're running away by giving up. If you want to run towards redemption, you won't find it in a jail cell."

Buster couldn't think of anything to say, so he didn't.

Petro sighed. "Look, I'll see if I can get Sophear to talk to you. This isn't just me, a lot of people are unhappy about this decision including members of the board. Just keep your communicator handy, and think about my offer."

"I will." Buster said simply, hesitating until Petro disconnected the call.

Buster sat there in silence, trying to think. He really didn't want to go to prison. But it didn't feel right to just go free when he knew he had done something wrong. That's how things worked, bad people were punished.

He was a bad person. He deserved to be punished.

He stewed in a haze punctured by guilt and depression until his communicator lit up again. He answered, a little more sober and a little less sure. "Hello?"

"Buster. It's Sophear. Petro said you won't help him." she started.

This made a spike inside him. You won't help.

"I'd love to help him. But I'm not going to become a fugitive just to help my friend." Buster explained.

Sophear laughed. It wasn't a mocking one. "Buster, you are a fugitive. You're like public enemy #1 in the Nakunan Empire. There's literally a bounty on your head!"

The panda bristled. "Yeah, but that doesn't count. Nakuna are the bad guys, I don't care what they think. They're wrong."

"I understand that, Buster. Humans aren't the 'good guys'. There are no 'good guys'. You've been taken care of here but you really don't know what life is like among Humanity right now. Zed Steadman was a beautiful experiment, but it's ending and I don't think you really understand how rough and senseless life as a prisoner of war will be. Have you considered that the other Nakunan prisoners might not take kindly to having a traitor in their midst? I think that's part of the reason why we're sending you there, so we can save face by letting the Nakunans do our dirty work for us." she explained as patiently as she could.

Buster was crestfallen. "You really think they'd do that? I'd expect that from the Nakunan Empire but I thought you guys were better than that."

Sophear seemed happy that he was following her breadcrumbs. "Exactly! You think too highly of us. You seem to throw yourself into things wholeheartedly and with great enthusiasm, which is wonderful. But it gives you a sort of tunnel vision, and you overlook things. You feel confident now, but in a year you'll have had time to realize I'm right and by then it will be too late."

He felt just a little cross at the implication that he didn't know what he was doing, but he didn't say anything and it passed quickly. He was getting better.

She continued, "That's one of the reasons I want you to go with Petro, he's good for you. He notices things that you overlook, and you listen to him when he tells you. You've been good for him too, you've been broadening his horizons and bringing him out of his shell. If Petro is going to leave, I can't think of a better person to care for him."

"That is true, when we first met all he ate was canned pasta. At least now I've worked him up to dried pasta. Maybe one day I'll even get him to try a vegetable!" Buster smiled.

"I'm taking a very serious risk doing this, Buster. We have a plan to cover our tracks, and in the chaos of Zed Steadman being disbanded I think the risk of discovery is low. But I am still jeopardizing my position. I've been putting myself at risk for what I believe in my entire life, becoming a member of a board didn't change that." she said.

He nodded, thinking. He trusted Sophear a lot. Petro spoke very highly of her and what his life and care was like under her supervision.

"I appreciate that. But humanity has treated me well, and I agreed to follow their rules. I didn't follow my end of the bargain, but they always did." he tried to explain.

Sophear closed her eyes, looking very weary. "Buster, I have some bad news. I didn't want to tell you, but if it's what it takes to make you change your mind then so be it: We've been lying to you. We broke our end of the bargain, just like you did."

The panda leaned forward in his seat, curious. "What do you mean?"

Sophear opened her eyes, looking reticent. "The samples of Little B. The ones you told us to destroy. We kept them. That's part of the reason why Nakuna has left us alone, we made sure their leaders knew that anyone who set foot on Baldwin's Fall would meet the same fate as the people stationed at Martenwol."

Buster was bowled over. He had trusted the humans so completely he hadn't even thought to follow up on his request to destroy the samples. The whole reason he defected to them was because of how evil his work was. Now they were going to turn around and do the one thing he explicitly never wanted to be responsible for again?

"I know you wouldn't lie to me about this. It makes a lot of sense. Geez, you're right, I am kind of oblivious, aren't I?" he said in surrender.

"I'm sorry. I don't disagree with the decision, though. It's probably the only reason Nakuna didn't just turn Zed Steadman into a crater: they think we've got agents throughout the galaxy ready to release Little B if anything happens to us here." Sophear continued.

Buster had a realization. "You didn't call it Little B, did you?" he almost pleaded.

"Of course we did. We wanted to scare Nakuna, and Nakuna is scared of you." she said.

Buster slumped is in his seat with a low whine.

"That's part of the reason why the board agreed to let you come here in the first place. Some of the others were even hoping we might be able to convince you to start making biologics for us. If anything, the reason you're going to prison is because you got better instead of going back to your old habits. That's why I'm helping you, I don't think it's right to discard you just because you're no longer useful to us as a weapon. They used my evaluations as evidence that wouldn't be a useful asset, and I don't appreciate my work being used to harm my patients." she concluded.

Buster sat slumped for a few more moments in silence, taking it all in. "But I love it here." he finally said in a small voice, almost to himself.

"You used to love Mirabelle, too. You'll get over it." she said with sternness but not without warmth.

He rested his face in his paws. He wasn't going to cry this time.

"Okay. I'll go with Petro. You're right. Thank you for explaining everything, Sophear. I need things explained to me sometimes." the panda said, voice heavy with remorse.

She genuinely seemed relieved. "I'm glad, Buster. He likes you a lot, I think the two of you could accomplish a lot of good out there together."

Buster was still spiraling into depression from the news, but he forced a little smile. "I really hope so."