Night Shriekers Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Night Shriekers – Justin Woolley

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘On Wings of Blood’

  A Black Library Publication

  eBook license

  Night Shriekers

  by Justin Woolley

  Dark shapes circled in the distant sky, twenty or more silhouettes against the yellow-orange dusk. From where she stood on the airbase’s hardstand, Marina Maranova watched the way the creatures effortlessly floated, borne aloft by warm updraughts under their leathery wings. They were nocturnadons, the apex predator on Raskova. In an hour, maybe less, when the landscape was plunged into the pitch-black of the Raskovan night, the graceful circles of the nocturnadons would become ferocious dives, their immense eyes guiding them down to pluck unwary prey from the ground.

  Nocturnadons only hunted at night, and it was only at night that you could hear their calls. The darkness would fill with the banshee-like screams that gave the beasts their more colloquial name, night shriekers.

  Marina Maranova smiled – today she would be joining those magnificent beasts. She was finally a member of the 2,588th Imperial Navy Fighter Wing, the ‘Night Shriekers’. Maranova waited with a dozen other recruits to the elite unit, all pilots fresh from Thunderbolt conversion training. The recruits were all women, just as all the pilots, ground-crew and support staff of the wing were women. It was only female night shriekers that hunted, and so it was with the unit that bore their name.

  Maranova felt the jab of an elbow in her ribs. Beside her, fellow recruit Alena Nazoya gestured with her head. Coming in low over the rugged terrain to the south was a formation of six aircraft. At the low centre were two Valkyrie assault carriers, easily identifiable by their negative-slanted wings and their high cross-boom tails. Flying escort formation for the Valkyries, two on either side, were the unmistakable blunt-nosed shapes of Thunderbolt fighters.

  Maranova leaned close to Nazoya. ‘Two rations says I get to fly a Thunderbolt first.’

  ‘Double it says I will,’ Nazoya whispered back.

  Nazoya and Maranova had grown up together in the labyrinthine tunnels of Undermine Primus on the other side of Raskova. For everyone who lived in those pitiful depths, life was little more than a struggle for survival, but the two young girls had bonded over dreams of the sky they so rarely saw and the heroic Raskovan flying aces whose faces adorned the omnipresent Imperial Navy recruitment posters. They soon developed a friendly rivalry and pushed each other to climb from the depths all the way to the sky. They had been selected together, trained together and now accepted into the fabled Night Shriekers together.

  As the formation of six aircraft flew in to Lipka Airbase, the two Valkyries broke from formation and slowed to land on a pad a short distance away. The Thunderbolts continued in a low flyby. The lead aircraft gave a small wing waggle and Maranova saw the black nocturnadon emblem on the tail, wings spread and curled talons at the ready. Night Shriekers. All Maranova had wanted these last five years was to fly with the Night Shriekers and join the fight against the t’au. For many years Raskova had produced the finest pilots in the sector, if not the whole segmentum, but now it was their own world they were forced to defend.

  A woman in a stiffly pressed Imperial Navy uniform walked across the hardstand towards them. Maranova recognised her from the picts she’d seen: Wing Commander Tamara Groneva, commanding officer of the 2,588th. The recruits snapped to attention.

  ‘Good evening, recruits,’ Groneva said, her voice quiet yet commanding. ‘I apologise for keeping you waiting.’ She wiped her forehead with a white handkerchief, clearing away the sweat – the Raskovan heat was still punishing, despite it being dusk. ‘Welcome to the Night Shriekers. Each of you has been selected for the aptitude shown during your training. We have taken heavy losses of late as the t’au push towards the capital. We need all the reinforcements we can get.’

  Groneva looked to the side as a pilot approached, one of the recently landed Night Shriekers. She was removing her black balaclava and letting her mess of blonde curls fall free.

  ‘Ladies,’ Groneva said, ‘let me introduce you to Squadron Leader Nina Yakleva. It takes five kills for a pilot to be declared an ace. Most pilots manage at best one or two kills before they get smoked. Squadron Leader Yakleva has thirteen. She’ll be evaluating you in a series of initial training sorties.’

  Maranova stared at Squadron Leader Yakleva. She was just like the aces on the recruitment posters, helmet tucked under her arm, hair fluttering in the warm breeze.

  Yakleva ran her eyes along the line of recruits. She didn’t seem impressed. ‘Am I taking some up now?’ she asked.

  Groneva nodded. ‘Prepare yourselves for your first flight as Night Shriekers, recruits. Your birds are prepped and ready to fly. You’re all capable pilots already, but we’ll take you from pilots to predators.’

  ‘We’re flying a sortie now, ma’am?’ Nazoya asked.

  The wing commander turned her attention to Nazoya. ‘You’re in a war zone now, recruit. The nocturnadons sit facing into the wind, always ready to spread their wings and soar, so must we always be ready. I’ll leave you with Squadron Leader Yakleva and will be awaiting her evaluation. The Emperor protects.’

  Yakleva snapped to attention as the wing commander left and then turned back to the recruits. She unzipped a pocket on her flight suit and removed a dataslate, staring at it for a few moments before looking up. ‘Maranova and Nazoya,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ the friends answered in unison.

  ‘You two supposedly finished top of your training squadron so you’ll be first. We’ll see what chaff they’ve sent us this time. Maranova, you’ll be my wingman. Nazoya, you’ll fly with Flight Lieutenant Zina Matlova. Get yourselves suited up and to your birds. We’re airborne in thirty minutes.’

  Yakleva turned and walked away without waiting for their acknowledgement. Maranova and Nazoya turned to look at each other, unable to keep the smiles off their faces.

  ‘I suppose this means it’s a tie for those ration sticks,’ Nazoya said.

  Maranova smirked. ‘Four rations says I get the first training kill, then.’

  ‘Double it says I will.’

  Maranova shifted in the seat of her Thunderbolt. The servitor had secured her harness tighter than she liked and it dug into her shoulders through her flight suit. She looked at the Thunderbolt on the hardstand beside her. Squadron Leader Nina Yakleva was stencilled just below the canopy, and beneath that the word Rocklilly had been added, along with a decorative white flower and a line of red crosses, thirteen so far. An aircraft blessed with a name by Navy high command, an honour only bestowed on a verified ace.

  Both aircraft still had their canopies open and Maranova saw Yakleva reach forward and insert a white flower, just like that painted on her fuselage, into the space between her instrument panel and the heads-up display. Yakleva was supposed to be the toughest ace in the Night Shriekers – did she think flowers could inspire fear in the enemies of mankind? When Maranova was an ace, her aircraft would be named for some vicious predator, not a flower.

  Maranova’s ground fitter stepped back from the aircraft and gave her a thumbs up. Maranova returned the signal and flicked the switch on her instrument panel to lower her aircraft’s canopy. When the canopy sealed shut, the roaring engines, shouts and squealing tyres of the airbase all vanished.

  Maranova was alone. Despite the chatter of vox traffic through her helmet and the surrounding activity of the airbase, there was a sense of isolation in the cockpit. The troopers of the Imperial Guard, even the fearless Adeptus Astartes, stood side b
y side with each other as they fought. Fighter pilots, even if they were in formation with a hundred other aircraft, were always alone in the cockpit, reliant on themselves and their machines. They were the Emperor’s loneliest warriors.

  ‘Shrieker Two, this is Lipka Tower, vox check.’

  Maranova thumbed her vox-control. ‘Lipka Tower, Shrieker Two. Five by five.’

  ‘Confirmed. You are cleared for take-off, runway four-seven right. Climb and maintain flight level two five zero. The Emperor protects.’

  ‘Acknowledged, Lipka Tower. The Emperor protects.’

  Maranova taxied her Thunderbolt onto the runway and stopped, running her eyes over the instrument panel for a series of final checks. All indicators were green. She pushed the throttle forward, activated rocket assist and was immediately planted into her seat. She pulled back on the stick, instinctively clenching the muscles in her legs and abdomen, breathing in short, sharp breaths as she climbed hard. The G-force piled onto her like rockcrete blocks laid on her chest.

  When she reached twenty-five thousand feet, Maranova levelled her aircraft off and turned to link up with Yakleva’s Thunderbolt, taking the wingman position. Though they were moving at just over five hundred and fifty miles an hour, the blue-grey aircraft beside her seemed to float motionless against the burnt orange of the Raskovan sky.

  Below them the landscape of Raskova stretched away, an endless vista of rust-orange rock criss-crossed with immense canyons and deep crevasses.

  The people of Raskova inhabited cities clinging to the sides of these vast canyons, living in the cool shadows away from the blazing heat of the surface. Most of the population worked in mines deep inside the immense tears in the rock, extracting rich deposits of rare silicate minerals.

  Years ago, the t’au had approached the planetary government offering to share advanced mining technology in exchange for a share of the planet’s silicate. They were refused. When they returned a decade later they didn’t bother asking and the planet was plunged into war. Because of its largely impassable geography, widespread movement over the planet was only possible by air, and so the battle for this world would be decided by pilots like the Night Shriekers.

  ‘Shrieker Two, Shrieker One,’ Yakleva’s calm voice crackled over Maranova’s vox, ‘switch to private.’

  ‘Shrieker One, confirm.’

  Maranova reached forward and adjusted the vox-channel dial, switching to the private link between her aircraft and Yakleva’s.

  ‘All right, Maranova,’ Yakleva said. ‘This might be a training engagement, but I want you to treat it as if it were real. We’ll use all the sky but keep inside the designated training AO.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Somewhere ahead of them Flight Lieutenant Matlova and Nazoya were also in the air. This was to be a simulated combat, two against two, where the more senior pilots could put the rookies through their paces.

  ‘Two enemy aircraft bearing zero-eight-three, altitude ten thousand. Do you have them on auspex?’

  ‘Confirmation,’ Maranova replied. ‘I have them.’

  ‘Maintain speed. Turn right, zero-nine-zero to intercept. Find altitude twelve thousand.’

  ‘Confirm.’

  Maranova maintained formation with Yakleva as they rolled, turning their aircraft towards the fight, both Thunderbolts trailing white condensation in twirling vortices off their wing tips. Maranova was itching to get into combat – even mock combat – and prove herself.

  ‘They’re turning,’ she reported, glancing down at her auspex.

  ‘Prepare for a head-to-head pass,’ Yakleva said. ‘We’ll put them on our left. On my mark, high-G turn left with hard brake. We’ll try to get inside them.’

  Maranova watched the auspex. At a closing speed of nearly twelve hundred miles an hour, the distance between them was rapidly shrinking. Maranova looked up to search the sky for the two aircraft coming towards them.

  ‘I have visual,’ Yakleva said.

  Maranova strained her eyes against the Raskovan sky. She’d always had good eyes for spotting enemy aircraft but despite scanning ahead she couldn’t see any movement. It took another few seconds but then two black dots resolved themselves in the distance at her two o’clock. ‘Confirming visual now.’

  Matlova and Nazoya’s aircraft grew. At their extreme head-to-head closing speed the two black dots rapidly became the recognisable chunky-ended shapes of Thunderbolt fighters, and seemingly the next second they roared past as a blur of colour. Maranova immediately whipped her head around as far as she could to maintain visual, but they’d vanished past her sight arc into her blind zone.

  ‘Mark,’ Yakleva called over the vox and Maranova immediately jammed her stick over and planted her foot hard on the rudder pedal, throwing her aircraft into an extreme turn left. She pulled the throttle back and hit the speed brakes – sacrificing airspeed to turn in a sharper radius. The G-force pinned her back in the seat, her flight suit instantly contracting around her legs to keep the blood from being pulled from her brain as she suddenly weighed eight times more than normal.

  As Maranova’s Thunderbolt came around in its tight turn, she caught sight of Matlova and Nazoya’s aircraft again. They had banked hard in the same direction so that the two pairs of fighters were heading towards each other again, this time around the circumference of the same circle. Matlova and Nazoya had attempted the same manoeuvre, neither pair managing to out-turn the other.

  ‘On my mark, come straight and level,’ Yakleva said. ‘They’ll overshoot and correct to get on our six.’

  ‘I know you’re the ace but isn’t having them behind us what we’re trying to avoid here?’

  ‘I’ll split high and come down behind them. You just keep flying straight long enough for me to get a solid tone. Ready,’ Yakleva paused, ‘now.’

  Maranova levelled out of the turn. Yakleva did the same and, just as she’d predicted, Matlova and Nazoya, continuing their tight turn, shot past behind them. As soon as they did, Yakleva pulled up, splitting away from her formation with Maranova. Maranova watched on auspex as Matlova and Nazoya turned back to come around behind her. She was sure she could outmanoeuvre them this time and get in behind for a shot. Disobeying Yakleva’s instructions was her chance to prove she belonged here, that she was the best. Maranova turned hard.

  ‘I’ll get in behind one and you get the other,’ she said.

  Yakleva’s response came back over the all-channels vox. ‘Operations, this is Shrieker One. I’m scrubbing the sortie.’

  ‘Shrieker One, Operations. Confirmed. Contact Lipka Tower on approach, the pattern is clear.’

  ‘What?’ Maranova said. ‘Why are we going back?’

  ‘Shrieker Three and Four,’ Yakleva said, ignoring Maranova, ‘return to base.’

  ‘Confirmed.’

  Yakleva’s Thunderbolt came back to take position off Maranova’s wing. Maranova turned to look into the other Thunderbolt’s cockpit. Yakleva’s helmeted face was looking back at her.

  ‘Ma’am?’ Maranova asked again. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I gave you an order. You disobeyed me.’

  ‘Squadron leader, if I could explain–’

  ‘You don’t explain to me, pilot officer. You do as I tell you.’

  ‘Ma’am, I–’

  ‘You graduated top of your training squadron and for a moment I actually had high hopes for you. Turns out you’re just another arrogant hotshot. Get this through your skull, rookie. You are a warrior of the Emperor, a professional, you never let your ego take the stick of that Thunderbolt, you understand?’

  Maranova swallowed against the rock that seemed to have become lodged in her throat.

  ‘I said, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Too many pilots think they’re the God-Emperor’s gift to the air,’ Yakleva said. ‘We
’re flying against Barracudas up here. They’re better armed, they turn faster, they get a lock on you and you’re dead. You keep your head on your shoulders and listen to me, and maybe you’ll live longer than five minutes, clear?’

  Matlova’s voice broke through before Maranova could reply. ‘Two unidentified aircraft on auspex, north, thirteen miles.’

  Maranova looked down at her auspex and saw the same thing, two blips on the screen, two aircraft that hadn’t been there before. At first Maranova thought they must have been aircraft sent in to complicate the training sortie, but this assumption was broken when Yakleva next spoke.

  ‘Operations, this is Shrieker One, we have two unidentified aircraft incoming fast. Confirm friendly.’

  ‘Shrieker One, this is Operations, negative. No friendly birds in the air.’

  ‘Shrieker Flight, this is Shrieker One,’ Yakleva said. ‘Shrieker Two and Four, continue to base. Shrieker Three, on my wing, prepare to intercept. We’ll hold them up. Operations, scramble ready fighters.’

  Matlova turned to form up with Yakleva.

  ‘Shrieker One, this is Operations, confirmed. Six ready fighters away, inbound eight minutes. Auspex signature confirmation, two enemy Barracudas.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Maranova said, ‘those Barracudas are less than thirty seconds away, backup is eight minutes out – don’t send us back to base. Four on two is better than two on two.’

  ‘Turn and burn for home,’ Yakleva said. ‘Get back within the Lipka air-defence perimeter.’

  ‘Ma’am, I’m your wingman. Let me stay with you.’

  ‘You’re not ready. You’ve already shown that. Turn and burn, Shrieker Two. Get to the safe zone.’

  Maranova was weighing up whether to argue further when Nazoya’s voice came over the vox. She’d turned wide when she’d broken off from Matlova to return to base and was further north than the rest of the Thunderbolts, closer to the incoming enemies. ‘Enemy aircraft coming hard onto my six o’clock,’ she called over the vox. To an outsider her voice may have seemed calm, but to another combat pilot the panic was clear.