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

Certainty twitched and Fionn slammed his hand on the controls, reclaiming the display. More red lights than Pit could easily count flashed on the radar. "Damn! Still on us, those bastards. Rave, I need you on guns. Pit, you too, if you can manage it. Minna, can you man the ancillaries?"


The woman nodded assent amid Ravenna's huff of breath and scrabbling of claws as she spun around and left the bridge without another word.


"I know where it is," Pit said, answering a question Fionn hadn't asked yet. "I'll find it, anyway." There were only so many places it could be on Pit's HUD map of the ship.


Neither of the humans spoke to him as he left; they were too busy talking to each other in an easy, bantering way.


Chapter 35