[Author's note: please rate & please leave comments! I like constructive criticism and need to hear blunt truths in order to improve as a writer. The Jin Dui itself s a creative project featuring an original ship and original crew; most of the crew members are characters owned by other participants in our collaborative project. All Jin Dui artwork and fics are posted to http://jin-dui.swartzer.com; more art and fics from other participants are in the works.]

March 10, 2514 / Port of Yankton, Deadwood / Blue Sun Cluster

The ride down through atmo had been a hairy one, choppy enough that even the shuttle’s two motherly-looking flight attendants had given each other the worried eye and strapped themselves in. Hoss had gripped the arms of his seat as though sheer manly muscle alone could hold the battered craft aloft. The dents left by his death-grip were still visible now in the foam padding, well after the puddlejumper was safely aground. Hoss watched the dents slowly fill in as he waited for the rest of the shuttle’s passengers to grab their gear and rush off of the boat.

Passengers were passengers, no matter what size of ship or what corner of the ‘Verse you were flying, he thought with amusement, in the wake of that evacuation. He had spent the last nearly three years of his life since Armistice in the service of passengers. Patience was a virtue, and he considered himself a blessed, blessed man.

When most of the cabin had filed out, he finally pushed himself to his feet. The underseat cubby had been left open. He swung his seabag out and tucked it under one arm, aware as he did so of how the flight attendant who had been watching him took a nervous step sideways out the center aisle. Hoss was big -- even among his sizable brothers and cousins and uncles, he always played as lock on the family rugby team. To the rest of the normal-sized ‘Verse, he was something of a giant. Sitting in the shuttle seat had been a confinement; standing no