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

I have not yet dared to venture into the deeper waters with the expeditions led by Chailes and Pir, so I am unsure what potential danger we shall find there, but meantime I continue to find Chir's wildlife to be, on the whole, quite charming.


In fact, I have the delight of being visited by a Chirran toad as I pen this; he is nearing me by step after tentative step, and he bares his throat to me as if he wishes me to rub it. And so I shall! He reminds me of my loyal dog Harry back home.


~ final journal entry of galactic explorer Jorsen Moller, before he infamously initiated the defensive poison response of the Chirran Death Toad (then-unnamed)


As soon as he stepped outside, Chir swarmed Pit's head and filled it with frivolity again. Gone was the newfound empathy and sense of connectedness and camaraderie he'd shared with Ravenna in Gremma's shop, replaced instead with lewd thoughts and the urge to speak them aloud.


Chapter 27