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

Ravenna had left the hold hours earlier. He wasn't sure if she'd slept at all, but in his restless half-sleep, he'd heard her nails clicking across the floor long before his sluggish body was ready to stir. Her scent was now too old to trail, so Pit wandered around Certainty a while, pointedly avoiding the bridge. He knew Ravenna wouldn't be there.


Pit had just resigned himself to returning to the hold when he went around a very narrow switchback and spotted a flash of light he didn't recognize. He had to take several steps backward, stepping on the tips of his ears as he did so, but he spotted a tiny passageway at daugment-height that he'd missed in his mapping of the ship. Before, the unlit opening had disappeared in the weird obsidian of Certainty's hallway.


The flash of light came again, and this time Pit could tell it was from a handheld source. Activating his HUD, keeping a wary eye on the warning systems, he slunk through the tunnel.


Chapter 37