Author:
In another lifetime, August was a punk kid running a writing-themed e-zine in 2002 and participating in online survivor writing contests; these days, she’s a punk pseudo-adult with an office job and a studio of her own.

Meet Pitney Scolan. Pit, for short. He’s a decorated general and a venerated leader of the sprawling human race. He’s protected his species' colonies from vicious native animal populations and hostile alien life. He’s fiercely introverted, and he’s really looking forward to retiring on his personal planet in the very near future.

Except…now he has to be a dog.

A daugment, to be specific: a cybernetically enhanced canine, previously the doting pet of Pit’s biggest rival, General Tristan. It’s the only way to escape certain assassination.

So Pit grudgingly allies himself with a pair of well-meaning scoundrels and sets sail for seedier space in hopes of escaping Tristan’s clutches. What he finds instead is a galactic conspiracy to force him to make friends.

Daugment

"Ah, solitary reading," Pit said, holding back the eagerness from his voice. "That's an activity I'm rather familiar with. Father didn't have much nice to say, and Mother made me relive every awful word, plus a few of her own. So I stayed in the library every afternoon from when I was six, or I took my books to the gardens or the tower. I suppose now that I think about it, it's a little odd no one questioned the six-year-old devouring Helmund."


Ravenna's ears swiveled forward. "A personal favorite," she said with a soft woof. "Though, not until I was fifteen."


"Well. I was never a typical kid." The back of Pit's ear itched something fierce, and he plopped down to scratch it-canine conversational protocol be damned. He noticed that his tail no longer throbbed. "Speaking of reading, can you recommend anything good to read in the standard HUD database? I-don't really feel like reading the news. It's so depressing these days."


"What do you like to read? Be specific, please."


Chapter 21