Mid-October update, plus a Star Patrol sample

Hey, all!

First of all, I just want to thank you <3 You are wonderful people, and I’m honored and thankful to have your support. …That sounds more like I’m running for office than writing furry short stories >.> but I mean it. Thank you <3

Next, updates. So, unfortunately I’ve been working 60–70 hour weeks for the last month or so, which slowed down my rate of updating older stories. New material to SoFurry has all been uploaded with annotations to writing.dog, simultaneous with its posting.

That said, for immediate next steps: this weekend I will post the final chapter of The Valiant and the Bold, concluding that novel. …Hopefully to the satisfaction of my readers. After that, the long hiatus of the Dark Horse, Season 4 will end. This will be a 5-episode season, rather than the previous two which were effectively 3 episodes long (with the third episode being a long-form two-part story).

In which:

• The Dark Horse comes to the rescue of a crashed freighter, which proves to be highly… challenging, especially when things being exploding.
• A defector from the recurring pirate antagonists brings their attention back to the planet-destroying superweapon that was the focus of the 3rd season’s “Prophecy.”
• Sabel Thorsen is captured on an away mission, and gets into Adventures

To conclude, the nature of this Adventure:

Madison May told Sabel to hold his position and closed the link. “He’s a god?”

“Apparently.” Leon was happy the spitz was safe, but not yet to the point of appreciating any humor in his condition. “For now.”

“Doc: is this as bad as it sounds?”

“It is… highly irregular,” Beltran replied. Within the borders of the Terran Confederation, she’d have considered what was now transpiring quite ‘bad,’ indeed—it violated every protocol, not to mention every bit of good sense. Beyond the frontier, with nobody coming to their aid, the leopardess had learned to be more flexible.

May, who set the tone of the crew’s flexibility, didn’t always recognize the degree of that change in their diplomatic officer. “‘Irregular’ meaning ‘bad’? In your opinion, that is.”

“He is alive, and unharmed. Were either of those conditions unmet, I might be more critical. As it is, ‘irregular’ is sufficient—but we should do what we can to avoid needing any reevaluation. In my opinion.”

“Then we need to get him out of there, as quickly as possible. Ideally without any conflict. Right? And the longer we wait for the ‘ceremony’ to be finished, the more exposed we are.”

“Yes, captain.”

“I don’t get what he was thinking. A god? Mythic hero, anyway, I mean—where did he learn that? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Really? I might have guessed.”

The Akita blinked her surprise at the leopardess. “Why?”

“His programming is oriented around threats, captain. The Morli ceased to be a threat, and he would have no reason not to engage with them. No one included diplomatic lessons in his design. Since he was awoken on your vessel, we have brokered peace treaties between a spacefaring culture and their less-technological counterparts, intervened in a civil war, attempted a decapitation strike on the most powerful empire in the sector, time-traveled back to the 1960s to prevent Earth’s nuclear annihilation, sold weapons to a race of self-proclaimed ‘hunters,’ assisted a—”

May held up her paw. “I see where you’re going. He wouldn’t exactly have, ah… learned by example.”

“On the contrary.”