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21 August 2005

MISSION OF THE
RAVEN
BY WALTER D. REIMER

Mission of the Raven
Chapter One
© 2005 by Walter D. Reimer


February 2, 1936
Northern Nootka Sea:

        The sea was fairly calm, unusual for early February in the channels that ran among the dozens of small, rocky islands in the Nootka Sea.  It was just after dawn, but the sun did little to pierce the thick fog that muffled sounds and blinded even those furs with the sharpest eyes.
        The small Rain Island Naval Syndicate patrol boat P-12 slowed to a halt at its captain’s orders, the oil-burning engine’s sound fading away in the stillness.  “Nothing,” the bosun grumbled as the tubby fishing boat rocked in the gentle swell raised by its motion.  “Sorry, Captain,” the lynx said, “I can’t hear a damned thing.”
        The ship’s captain, a lean hound wrapped in a thick pea jacket, took his pipe from between his teeth and nodded.  “There may not be anything out there,” he mused.
        “We’ve been getting reports about strange goings-on up here, though,” one of the ship’s lookouts offered.  “Wait a minute – did you see that?”  The others turned to look.
        Just in time for an explosion to rip their small craft in half.

*********

February 12, 1936
Naikoon, Graham Island   
Rain Island Anarchcracy:

        It was hot, stifling hot, and coupled with the bugs and the ever-present dust it made his fur mat to his hide and almost stopped his breathing.  The labor was back-breaking and tedious despite the fact he’d been doing it as far back as he could remember, whether it was stacking the towering stalks or bending low with a knife to cut the tobacco plants free of the dusty Virginia soil. 
        As he labored, the landowner’s son rode past on his horse, his hat tipped back as he surveyed the blackfurs working in the fields.  He spat, and a stream of mingled brown tobacco juice and saliva spattered a few of the leaves.  He laughed as some of it struck the fur carrying the bundled stalks before urging his horse into a trot and moving away.
        He ground his teeth in anger at the younger man, wiping the foul liquid from his face …
        “Captain?  Captain Pierson?”
        The bear stirred, rolling over on his back in the bunk, and his ears twitched as someone knocked at the door to his cabin.  Slowly he drifted awake, leaving behind the backbreaking toil of his youth, with its degrading racism and limited opportunities, to find bright sunlight streaming through the porthole, the sounds of the harbor, and his Executive Officer knocking on the cabin door.
        He sat up, a paw absently scratching under his ribs.  “Come.”  He had to repeat the word; there were still a few in his crew who couldn’t understand his rural Virginia accent.
        The door opened and a slim doe entered.  She was dressed in the working uniform of the Naval Syndicate, a dark blue jumpsuit bearing the two stripes of her rank on the shoulders.  And, like the second-in-command in any navy, she looked harassed.  “Sorry to wake you, sir,” she said, “but we’ve gotten a message from Headquarters.”
        “Oh?”  He yawned.  “What do they want, Moira?”
        Moira Daniels tried to stifle a yawn of her own, then chuckled.  “Dammit, Marcus, will you stop that?  You’ve got me doing it now.”
        “Sorry,” Marcus Pierson said, grinning.  His smile faded as Maria said, “The Vice-Commodore wants you in his office as soon as possible.”
        “Damn,” the bear grumped, shaking his head.  “I had hoped to avoid having to get into full uniform this week.”  He stood up and asked, “Any idea what he’s wanting me for?”  His second-in-command was known for having friends in certain places.
        The pronghorn antelope shrugged.  “Beats me,” she said.  “I couldn’t get anything out of the runner.”  At his nod she stepped out, closing the door behind her as he started to undress.
        Marcus had come a long way since his birth forty-two years earlier to a sharecropper’s family.  He had left the tobacco farm and joined the U.S. Navy when he was seventeen, and had served in several ships up to the Great War.
        The War opened his eyes to the idea that there might be something better for him than peeling potatoes or shining officers’ shoes belowdecks, while others to whom God have given lighter fur lorded it over him.  He waited for his chance and took it one night while on liberty in San Francisco, never once looking back.  He had wandered about for a while, doing odd jobs, until finally he ended up in Rain Island.
        The people there didn’t care if he was a blackfur and weren’t finicky about new arrivals so long as they wanted to work.  And work he did, but since he had enjoyed being at sea, he had joined the Naval Syndicate.  He rose quickly, until he had been given his first command. 
        And now …

        He opened the door to his cabin, adjusting the stock collar that always threatened to choke him before straightening the Sam Bruin belt with its attendant sidearm.  The uniform was patterned after those worn by Canada’s legendary Mounties, except the tunic was a darker, almost maroon red and the straight-legged trousers were dark spruce green.  The shoulders of the tunic bore the three broad stripes of his rank. 
        As he strolled the deck furs stepped aside or nodded in acknowledgement.  “Morning, sir.”  “Mornin’, Marcus.”
        He smiled and greeted the furs, enjoying the smells of fresh bread coming from the galley, the fragrance tinged with a whiff of the smoke oozing from one of the Raven’s three tall, slim smokestacks.  Only one of her four huge boilers was lit, just providing heat and power to the ship’s generators.
        He stopped at the quarterdeck and reflexively saluted the only other fur in full uniform, then saluted the Rain Island flag hanging limply from its staff.  The red and black banner bore the national crest, a native representation of an eagle.  “I’m going ashore for a while,” Marcus said.  “Not sure when I’ll be back.”
        “Sure thing, Cap’n,” the young rating said, and Marcus headed down the gangway to the dock.  When he reached the dock, he turned and smiled proudly at his command.
        The cruiser Raven was one of two flagships in the Naval Syndicate (her sister, the Orca, was based to the south at Tanu), and Marcus had been her captain for just a few days more than a year.  Rain Island had acquired both ships, Brooklyn-class armored cruisers, from the United States Navy after the 1924 Washington Treaty had sent all of the major seafaring powers scrambling to sell or dump their old warships.  Despite her age (she was only two years younger than himself) and relative obsolescence, she could still make twenty knots.  Repeated (though expensive) gunnery drills had made her crew deadly accurate with her eight-inch main battery.
        Naikoon was a natural fjord, cut deep into the largest island that made up the anarchrcacy.  Its mouth faced north and opened into a large protected harbor that sheltered the local fishing fleet, merchant ships and the bulk of the Naval Syndicate’s Northern Group.  The town itself was largely wood, cut from the dense forests that surrounded it.  Smoke from cooking fires drifted skyward in the chilly air, and Marcus’ breath misted from his muzzle as he walked.
        The headquarters of the Northern Group was located in a large two-story building that sported a tall wireless antenna on its roof.  It also had a sign advertising rooms to rent, a sign that even the Naval Syndicate occasionally did work on the side.  Guests staying the night usually had rooms far away from the Syndicate offices.
        Marcus walked in and stepped over to the desk clerk.  “Hey, Sammy,” he said, “I’m supposed to talk to the Vice-Commodore.  Is he in his office, or in the restaurant?”
        Sammy laughed and pointed upstairs.  A nod of his horn-crowned head sufficed.  “He’s up there, Marcus,” the pronghorn replied, and Marcus went upstairs.
        “Marcus!  About time you showed up,” Vice-Commodore Al Hensley said as he rose from behind his desk and shook paws with the bear.  “Sit you down.  Coffee?”
        “No, thanks.  What did you need to talk to me about, Al?” the ursine asked as he sat.
        The elderly badger looked at him carefully as he poured a cup of coffee for himself.  “How long before you can get Raven ready for sea?” he asked.
        Marcus’ ears perked.  “I have a bet on with my engineer,” he said with a grin.  “A bottle of whiskey he can’t have full steam up within an hour.”
        The Northern Group commander laughed.  “I might just take a piece of that,” he said, then sipped his coffee.  “Marcus, I need you to take the Raven and her escorts north, into the Nootka Sea.  We’ve – well, something’s going on, and me an’ the others in the Command Syndic want it checked out.”
        “Okay,” the bear said, nodding.  “What’s going on?”
        Hensley warmed his paws against the sides of his mug before replying, “That’s just it.  We’re not sure.”  He walked over to a map of the region, tacked to the far wall.  “Three patrol boats, all lost in the past several weeks, all in this general area,” and his finger traced over a section of coastline studded with islands.  “Some wreckage has been found, along with a few bodies.  The Command Syndic’s worried that the cause might be our friends to the north.”
        Marcus thought a moment, his black-furred ears twitching.  Finally he glanced up.  “Alaska?” he asked.
        “Yes, Alaska.”  Hensley hitched one leg up on a corner of his desk.  “This was a bit before your time, I think,” he said, “but back in ’05 Alaska accused us of piracy.  Interfering with their gold shipments south to Frisco.  In hindsight, I think one or two of our captains might have gotten grabby, but that hardly mattered at the time, so we started fighting.
        “Now, as far as I recall it from my school days,” the burly badger said with a wink, “the actual war was a petty affair, little boats with guns popping off at each other and people dying.  Teddy Moosevelt was asked to mediate, but he had his paws full with the Russkis and the Japs at the time.  Tillamooka offered to mediate, so we all sat down at a Truce Potlatch.”
        Marcus blinked uncomprehendingly, and Hensley said, “Sort of a big party.  I’m surprised you’ve never been invited to one.  Each side displays its prestige, differences get hammered out and gifts get exchanged.  From what I recall it took three weeks, but a peace deal was worked out finally. 
        “Now, we generally leave Alaska’s ships alone, and they pay us a toll for passing through our waters.”  The badger looked down at his coffee, then at Marcus.  “I’d hate to see the truce end after thirty years,” he said quietly, “and with renewed piracy and possible trouble brewing out west we certainly don’t need another shooting war.”
        “I agree,” the bear said, standing and crossing to the map.  “That area, huh?” he mused, studying the chart.
        “Yes.”
        “Air cover?” 
        The Vice-Commodore shook his head.  “The weather’s too unpredictable.  Lots of fog in the area, so it’s dicey even for seaplanes.”
        “All right.  When do you want us to leave?”  At Marcus’ question, Hensley chuckled and rested a paw on several pieces of paper.  “As soon as you’re ready.  I have orders cut for your and the commanders of the Kestrel, Vulture and Shrike,” he said.  “They and their smaller escorts will form up on you as group commander.  Go up there and look around.  Find out what’s happening before another war breaks out.”
        “I understand, Al.”  Marcus straightened up to attention and saluted.  “I’ll make preparations for getting underway.”
        Hensley returned the salute, then grinned.  “And a bottle of whiskey says he can’t get her ready sooner than two hours.”
        “It’s a bet.”  Marcus left the office and took the stairs two at a time.  He was in a hurry now, but as he stepped out of the building he paused to look at his ship down in the harbor.
        At a shade over four hundred feet long, Raven was the biggest ship there, the three patrol boats that would escort her clustered close like chicks around a mother hen.  Other ships, ranging from small fishing boats to one old clipper still used for freight runs between Naikoon, the Yukon and Tillamook’s capital of Tsimshian lay at anchor or tied up alongside the docks.  The cruiser was painted a light gray, a far cry from her original white and wartime ‘dazzle’ color scheme, and he felt himself swell with pride at the sight of her.  He’d come a long way since his cubhood on the farm. 

*********

        It had taken a day to get the last of the supplies aboard and the ship turned to face the entrance to the fjord.  Now the entire crew of the Raven, 560 furs of both sexes and all descriptions, stood at attention, heads bowed. 
        The fleet’s shaman, an otter femme wearing ceremonial garb of wool, cedar bark cloth and a mask carved in the likeness of the cruiser’s namesake, danced and chanted prayers for protection.  The crews of the other ships were also standing at attention, quietly watching what could be seen of the priestess’s devotions.  Finally she was done, and was assisted over the side to a waiting boat as the ship’s bell sounded. 
        Marcus nodded to Moira Daniels, and she drew herself and announced in a loud voice, “All crew to quarters, make preparations for getting underway.”  As flag signals relayed her instructions to the other ships she and Marcus led the bridge crew into the wheelhouse, where she grasped a speaking tube.  “Engine Room, make one-quarter until we’re out of the fjord, then one-half.”  She looked up at the helmsfur to make sure she was ready.  The wolf nodded, paws gripping the wheel.
        “Yes, ma’am,” came the sulky tone of the engineer.  Marcus smiled to himself.  He thought that he would savor both bottles of whiskey.  And both the engineer and the Vice-Commodore would get over it.
        As smoke streamed from the Raven’s three funnels and the town of Naikoon slipped away aft, the crew started to sing.  The song was to an old church tune, and despite all efforts was fast becoming the unofficial anthem of the Naval Syndicate:

“We are the Naval Syn-di-cate,
The bold R. I. N. S.,
We may not shoot, we don’t salute,
We always look a mess.
But when the shot and fur flies
Our enemies will see
Just what can get accomplished
With solidarity!”*



(*Sung to the tune of “The Church’s One Foundation.”)

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