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've never seen anywhere so beautiful. I am a hyperbolic man by nature, but...the limits of my comprehension are challenged here. I would compare it to fairy tales, or cabinlore, or even ancient myths, but even those are not adequate metaphors.


Arich is divine. I fall to my knees as if before God in its grasses and streams. I am afraid my blasphemy will doom us.


~ The Reverend Balroc "Thunder," founding member of The Damn Shames, from his accounts of Arich


The ladder protruding from the access port in Certainty's underbelly ended abruptly, and Pit fell the last few feet into Arich's soft moss. He got to all fours, shaking with the effort.


"Gods, did I miss this," Pit sighed audibly.


"Invading an enemy fortress, sir?" Loper said mildly, dropping beside the hound. He seemed much less affected by the last twenty minutes of gut-wrenching terror they'd all just experienced, travelling through the black hole.


Chapter 50