“Sign! 10 O’Clock! 300 yards off! Ship-Sign! It’s a Sail! Raft! We got a Raft!” The lookout screamed. For a moment, Eli thought that they had spotted someone trying their luck on one of the frozen rivers up here. Everyone except him and the gunner had no experience with naval “ships”. To them, a “raft” was just an especially small and shitty craft. Apparently this lookout, one of Cone’s crew, was trained to identify the vessel’s propulsion mechanism. What was the call for their craft? Wheel and skids?

From his viewpoint, on the vessel’s fuselage, Eli could see the sail riding above the trees. It looked like a wing, or some kind of fin. It was a dark brown with no visible seams, like what he had seen with the membranes of bats, or maybe it was catfish skin. Either way, it was loping through another clearing in the woods, apparently unaware of the 60-foot Relay Roller III right next to it. This begged the question, whose presence were they unaware of? Eli was adept at picking out shapes deep in bayous and forests, but not with snow, and certainly not at 50 miles an hour. He knew this pace was necessary in order to stay within their pick-up window, yet he felt some remorse at skipping over so many things. Center-Clip’s, or whatever his name was, body was now hundreds of miles away. If this had been one of his normal trips, he would be around long enough to see the birds start to pick at it.

“Can you see his colors?” Cone shouted to the lookout after studying the sail for himself.

“No! Too much coverage!” The lookout said back. Cone grumbled something to himself before walking back to the pilot’s console. Eli followed. There wasn’t enough space in the pilot’s little enclosure to fit all three of them, so he had to wait outside. Cone kept his grumbly expression as he talked with the pilot, who nodded as he focused on the terrain. After hearing something he liked, the pilot grinned and started steering the Roller closer to the treeline. Cone stepped out as Eli was fighting to keep his balance.

“Like I said, there might be some of my business popping up during this contract.” Cone said, also with a grin.

“You think they’re someone you know?” Asked Eli.

“Remember how I was saying that my clan had been scuffling with the Blue-Rips last year? Well, there’s only five clans that fly sails, and only one desperate enough to send someone up here.” Once again, Cone wasn’t sure what his intended undertone for “up here” was.

“I’m pretty sure that person could be from any one of the clans.” Eli said.

“Well, I’m pretty sure that this fella’s a Blue-Rip, and even then, I’ll take a 20 percent chance.” Cone said.

“Are you going to run him down?” He asked.

“Pilot says he doesn’t want shit on the plow, and that he’ll sleep a lot better if he knows the Regime girl can hit a moving target.” Cone said. A moving target, what did the pilot expect “up here”?

“You really want me to ask her if she’s willing to waste slugs on a 1 in 5 chance of… what the fuck does this even get you?” Eli asked. Cone walked past him and climbed onto the center walkway.

“You’re still new to this place. Take vengeance whenever you can, preferably when no one else is looking.” Cone said to arguably the most multicultural crew in a 500-mile radius. Dragging political squabbles into the mission was also on the list of things that could go wrong.

“Hey D.Q! How close do you need to be to hit a person?” Cone asked the gunner as she laid on top of the cargo. No one had mustered the courage to ask her what the name meant.

“Offa this rig?” Her eyebrow perked up and her cheek clenched, giving Eli enough of a view to speculate on what had been done to her mouth.

“50 would be nice, but I can make do up to a hundred. I’ll get him down.” D.Q. assured Cone as she stood up and began pulling her gear out from the other bags. After some effort and accented cursing, she finally retrieved a rusted metal box that was almost as big as she was. When Eli recruited her, there had been a particularly entertaining conversation about stowing her weapon. Although he had never seen them without their weapons, he had assumed that Regime troops had containers to keep their armaments in. D.Q. had told him that such containers didn’t exist: people of the Regime always carried their guns with them. Then she had started rhapsodizing about how that practice came to be— whether it was out of paranoid bloodlust, or some kind of pride. Eli had been forced to interrupt her and ask if she could have a case made specially for the trip. She didn’t ask questions, and had met the rest of the crew with four tanks of fuel and that box.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

As the pilot maneuvered the Roller through patches of trees and over mild hills. D.Q. assembled her weapon. Kneeling over her box, she reached into the container and handled its contents like she was fixing an engine or some other mechanical task that Eli had no taste for. He was curious about what was inside, mostly to learn about D.Q.’s packing competence, but kept a respectful distance along with the rest of the crew. The finished product was some kind of a rifle with a barrel the length of Eli’s leg, and an enormous lever on the side of it. D.Q. leaned it next to her as she fished for ammunition. She scooped up three slugs, each the size of Eli’s fist, and shoved one into an opening on the rifle. After a moment’s contemplation, she let the other two fall back into the box. She stood up and pulled the gun’s lever. Eli wasn’t sure what that did, but it definitely meant someone was going to die.

The crewmembers who weren’t below decks stepped out of her way as she walked to the front. Cone looked away from his angry watching of the sail and stared at the gun.

“Is that—” He started before D.Q. cut him off.

“Don’t worry, this is a light configuration! You have your two barrels, belt-fed, and fully automatic!” She shouted at him before bracing the rifle against her shoulder. By now, the entire crew had assembled behind her, even their guide who was still lurking behind the pilot’s compartment. The sailing raft was now within firing distance, and Eli could see that the pitiful ship’s captain was wearing blue. Even if this wasn’t any kind of meaningful payback for the “scuffling” that Cone’s faction had endured, it would definitely make up for Center-Brace’s stunt this morning. Eli only considered murders as something that went wrong when the victim was someone outside of the group, and if they didn’t cause trouble for the crew afterwards. Perhaps this would be like that time with the pigeon-feeder and kick off a disastrous chain of events, leaving Eli as yet another sole survivor. Hopefully they were just gunning down a stranger for the shit of it, and nothing else.

Eli had been too focused on watching the sail to see the slug hit the raft’s captain. The “crack” of the rifle was legendary, but the blood was lackluster. There had been a little splotch on the ground before the raft flipped over. He had become accustomed to the fine mist and chunks produced by Regime’s close-quarter weapons. Nevertheless, he was confident that D.Q.’s contraption would also make her wrists throb for the rest of the day. She allowed herself a brief smile before turning back to disassemble her weapon. He heard one of the crew muttering, “hope we don’t see that again”. Someone else yelped after trying to pick up the slug’s ejected casing. Cone was staring at the blue figure in the snow.

“How long do you think that person has?” Eli asked D.Q.

“Hit his torso— anywhere between five minutes to the rest of the afternoon. But he’s not getting up.” She answered.

“Why do you ask?” Cone inquired.

“I have some questions… I’ll send him your regards.” Eli said as he started climbing down.

About twenty feet past the wreckage, there was steam from where the slug had landed. The raft had been a few pipes held together by fabric and welds, but it was so firmly wedged into the snow that the sail couldn’t move it. With some of the tethers twisted up or snapped off, the mass of brown fabric was partially folded, as if it was stooping over the carnage. By now, there was a respectable amount of blood coloring the snow and the figure’s blue coat. Eli honestly couldn’t tell their sex with their hood and severely emaciated frame. He didn’t even know where the slug had gone through their body.

“Fuckers…” The person began.

“It wasn’t my call.”

“At least they could have had the… balls… to come down here and…”

“Why are you up here?”

“Just make it stop.”

“My man says you’re a Blue-Rip, and that’s a more Southern territory. What brings you here?”

“What are you?” They asked, angrily.

“Were you going to be a supplicant?” They chuckled.

“Tell your ‘man’ that my business is already done with… Them… they see everything that happens up here.”

“We’ll see about that.” Eli said as he knelt next to them.

“I’ll see you… past the Singing Road.”

“Possibly…” He said, reaching into his jacket. The person looked like they were at an impasse between trying to say something more spiteful, or just letting their painful death do the talking. They had said what he had wanted to hear, and Eli slit their throat quickly. He wiped the blood off his knife with the remaining parts of the blue coat that weren’t already soaked.

“Past the Singing Road…” He said to himself. Two deaths in, and the good feeling still hadn’t left him.