Meanwhile... While the rest of the squadron departed for the final leg of their voyage, the Anson accelerated to takeoff speed and ascended into the sky. The daylight was beginning to fade, now, the city fully bathed in the orangeish glow of an antipodal summer evening. Inside the cabin, space was pretty tight - while the pilots busied themselves with the navigation and the bombaimer checked and rechecked the smoke bombs on board (more for lack of anything better to do, really), Coetzee fiddled with the radio, and Kaya went about...all the usual things that a Flight Engineer would presumably do (Page knew his way around a Merlin engine and a good deal of general maintenance skill, but beyond that, he wasn't ashamed to admit Kaya's technical knowledge entirely outstripped his. The little Australian was practically a savant). For his part, he settled in the "command chair" - which was to say, a single seat remaining from the passenger accommodations that was situated at an angle to the side window, so he could see out.
"Wow..." he heard Coetzee say, twisting around to look out the window, a transfixed grin on his face. "It sure is something, to be up this high..."
Page raised an eyebrow, a bit unsettled by the implications of just how visibly impressed Coetzee was. "Yeah...er...is...is this your first time...actually being
in a plane, Sergeant?"
"Hmm? Oh. Yes, it is. Never been up this high before. I tell you, I ain't never seen anything like it."
Coetzee looked back to see Page's rather stricken expression. "Oh, don't worry. I mean, I've operated this kind of radio system before. It's just now, I'm doing it on a plane. No problem at all."
Page felt somewhat better. "...Right. Well, hopefully, your first flight will be a reasonably safe one."
The Captain shifted in his seat. "So...what exactly do you know about these OB people? I've never even heard of them before we got sent down here, and it looks like they're running roughshod over the whole country. What exactly even are they...a political party, a militia, a union...what?"
Coetzee didn't turn around. "They're real troublemakers, that's what they are. Really like raising hell, causing all kinds of problems for us. I don't know too much about what they want beyond that, if I'm honest. Not really into politics. But you can't not notice what they're up to, these days."
Page leaned forward, interested. "Like what?"
"Well," Coetzee replied lackadaisically, "on one hand, they like doing all sorts of...erm...Boer stuff. Like having speeches talking about the old wars, building statues of old famous Boer folks, telling everybody not to speak English...that kind of thing. Now, all that's legal. But then, you hear all sorts of more interesting stuff, like them stockpiling weapons, drilling all the time...there's even rumors-"
Coetzee lowered his voice almost to a whisper (relative to the engine noise).
"-of
Germans in the country."
"Is that so?"
The South African nodded deeply, like he was taking Page deeply into his confidence.
"Oh, yeah. All sorts of stories. The big one for a while was parachute men - people seeing weird guys landing at night in their fields. 'Course, nobody ever found anything from 'em. But there's been another big one lately - some people out near Durban say they saw a German boat out there a few weeks ago, and people keep saying they see it every few days or so."
"What kind of German boat?"
Coetzee screwed up his eyebrows. "You know the kind...er...the big black ones, that go underwater."
"A submarine."
He nodded. "Yeah! That was the word. Yeah, a submarine. So maybe the Germans and the OB hooked up."
Page leaned back. The thought was disturbing, but not at all implausible. Nonetheless, it really didn't change the calculus of the situation any.
"I wouldn't pay the crazy stuff like that too much mind though," Coetzee admitted, chuckling, especially from around Durban. They're all crazy down there."
"Really?"
"Oh, yeah. Just for fairness' sake, there's another rumor going around Durban now, according to some of my buddies who read the papers. They say - hand to God - there's a Charou flying around Durban, setting fire to buildings and stuff."
There was a pregnant pause.
"...
What?"
Coetzee grinned even more widely, if that was possible. "Yeah, I know. Some guys told me that the police have been trying to hunt down some arsonist setting a whole bunch of fires across the city. So they finally tracked down this Indian fella who they saw at the scene, cornered him in an alley - and he stuck his arms out and flew off up into the sky like a bird, just like that. He's been seen a whole bunch more times since, flitting around the city, just setting fires all over and cruising off whenever somebody sees him. Apparently, whenever he flies, he emanates some
horrid noise that stops anyone chasing him in their tracks."
Page had no idea how to respond to this.
"I...wow. That's some story."
"I know. I can't make any sense out of it either. Shows you what they'll believe down there."
Coetzee was still chuckling to himself. "Guess whoever he is, if he's real, he must really hate Durban -
and everyone in it."
"I...I suppose so."
The plane flew on...
Back on the ground..."...So I tried to tell our CO that he had a sheet saying "I AM A FAIRY" taped to his back, but he wouldn't let me get a bloody word in edgewise-"
"Because he thought you were the one who had covered his office doorknobs in steel wool?" Alix giggled.
"Exactly!" Reide laughed at the memory. "My name was mud with him - I could've told him his pants were on fire, and he'd have told me to stop talking rubbish. So he goes marching down the ranks, cool as you like, ramrod-straight, thinking he looks like a bloody hero - and everyone in the entire training company falls to pieces laughing as soon as he gets past them. Nobody could help it! At least I could honestly say it wasn't my fault
that time..."
Alix couldn't help laughing along with him. "That's quite a story, Lieutenant. Wish I'd been in a unit like that when I got trained..."
"Actually, I was a bit curious," he replied. "How...exactly were you accepted into a unit like this? I don't...I mean, I didn't want to draw any attention to your...erm..."
Alix shrugged. "Right place, right time. It's a very long story, it'd probably bore the living daylights out of you-"
"Nonsense."
"-but in essence, I was trained alone, and half on the job. It was very...improvised. So, needless to say, I don't have quite the same base of experience everyone else does."
"You must have at least one good story or two."
Alix thought for a moment. "Well, I did sucker-punch my commanding officer in the face, once."
Reide almost did a double-take. "You're bloody joking."
"Not at all. Hand-to-hand training. That part of it was really awkward for me - I'd never thrown a punch in my entire life before that, and I'd kind of written myself off as being terrible at it before I'd even tried. But Page - that's the Captain, the Excalibur squadron leader - kept needling me and pushing me to actually try and go for him, for me to really throw one and mean it, because that was what it would be like in combat. And I kept pretending to try, and he kept pushing me, and taunting me, over and over again - and finally, I just got sick of it and cracked him in the nose with everything I had."
"Wow."
"Fortunately, we were wearing gloves," Alix continued, "so I just knocked him down, but I felt absolutely terrible about it for a second or two. Then, I saw that he was smiling like a madman and realized that that was exactly what he was hoping for. He was trying to get me angry, so I'd go for it, and he could definitely tell when I had. It got a lot easier after that."
"Sounds like quite an interesting fellow."
Alix sighed. "Really, he's just the most - wait...is that the UDF company up ahead?"
Reide craned his neck. "Yes, I think you're right. That's them camped. The rally point should just be a few hundred yards up ahead."
After a few more minutes, Reide pulled the truck over. "All right, everybody out. We're all on foot from here. The assault should start..."
He checked his watch. "...within the next 45 minutes."