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Night Shriekers – Extract

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.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in Great Britain in 2020.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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ISBN: 978-1-78999-928-0

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