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

Pit desired Chir. The smells became one heady perfume, a scent that drove him wild. He snuffled gracelessly as he strained against the harness.


Fionn glared over his shoulder. "Stop before you get something worse than drool on my leather seats, you cad."


Pit yipped but complied, because Fionn's voice held that commanding property again, and he was compelled to obey. He subsided and returned to dreaming outwards. A gorgeous light orange humanoid beckoned to him from a shifting billboard, and Pit wagged his tail. That wasn't an alien species he could identify, but he was more than willing to get acquainted.


He blinked, dashed out of his reverie as surely as a sleeper doused in cold water, and realized he'd have to contend with a new obstacle in his occasional quests for sexual satisfaction.


The idea of sleeping with an intelligent family pet still didn't appeal to the general population.


Chapter 23