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

Can you believe this shit? Kid paid $14k for an ASTEROID. No one will visit his punk ass way out here. Serves the lonely idiot right.


~ virtual missive attached to seller's copy of Prowess's deed of sale


And it's all for me grog, me jolly, jolly grog,


For I spent all me tin on lassies drinkin' gin,


Across the Western ocean I must wander!


Eyes closed, wincing at the deep crick in his neck, he shook his head. Though it cleared the old tune, it sent a wave of audible aches and pains up and down his entire body. Pit snapped his eyes open and stared hard straight ahead of him until the world came into focus.


Certainty's hold greeted him: stark, cool, dripping with home. Just like his mother.


How very clich of me, Pit thought, and then the memory of everything crashed over him like a breaking wave. His stomach churned with horror, relief.


Chapter 59