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

"...in these confines with a monarch's voice


Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war!"


~ Antony, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar


They went over the strategies, the tactics the contingencies many times. Almost all of the volunteers had some sort of military training, and those who didn't knew enough to listen and keep quiet-all of them, all 600-some soldiers, widows and widowers, outlaws, merchants, farmers, and other flotsam of the human universe. A few four-legged beasts wove among them, keeping their own thoughts.


When there was nothing left to anticipate, they all fell into a rough circle without being told to do so.  No one raised their voices until Isaias moved to the center of the group. He spoke in slow, deliberate sentences that the rows of people could pass along to the rest.


Chapter 52