Sign of the Dragon (Tatsu Yamada Book 1) by Niall Teasdale (e reader TXT) 📕

was the source of the leaked data, but there was no way to be sure. What was sure was that Fukui had said there were no disgruntled employees at ViraShield. Someone was certainly displeased by the attitude of the CEO.

Tatsu dispatched the entire package off to HQ with her comments, and then she went to bed, intent upon talking to Hideki Fukui first thing in the morning.

~~~

She had been asleep for less than an hour when an urgent message from HQ triggered her notification alarm and she woke up as an annoying chime sounded inside her head.

Alert! Reports of gunfire on the streets in the Yachiyo area. Confirmed sighting of Burrell, Dexter among those in combat. Combatants armed with military weaponry and armour. Respond immediately.

Sending an acknowledgement, Tatsu grabbed for her clothes and started to dress.

~~~

Tatsu’s bike ran almost silently on twin electric motors which powered it along at high speed in the direction of Yachiyo. Her in-vision map was showing the approximate position of the fight she was heading for. It was approximate because surveillance in Chiba was not up to the standard of Tokyo or any of the other cities. In Tokyo, Tatsu would by now have information on every weapon in use, full identities of the combatants, and what colour their underwear was. In Chiba, she had to do it all the hard way.

Well, not entirely. She had got an image from a street camera of one of the people chasing Burrell. That was not giving her much as far as identity went, but she had a good idea what kind of weaponry she was facing. It looked like they were some kind of hit squad. The one in the image was wearing full-powered combat armour with a helmet and carrying a magnetic accelerator carbine with an underslung grenade launcher. The grenade launcher could be bad news depending on the warhead. The armour was not good news since it was capable of stopping the rounds Tatsu’s own weapons fired. Well, she had a grenade launcher too…

The sound of gunfire had her turning right, where she rapidly came across a burning car and found herself riding toward what had once been Iizunakinrin Park. There was neither trees nor grass there now, but there was an open expanse of polymerised concrete with various structures on it: public toilets, a skate park, a tearoom which had not been open in years, and two groups of gunmen firing at each other from the cover those structures provided.

Burrell was not visible, but he was still hanging out with Carter and the Yachiyo 8 Chome Yankees. The gang was holding its own better than Tatsu might have expected. They were armed with a variety of assault rifles, SMGs, and pistols. It seemed unlikely that they were a major threat to the armoured goons, but they were managing to hold them off somehow. The only thing Tatsu could immediately think of was that the mercs wanted Burrell alive and had brought grenades filled with capture webbing. A couple of good hits with explosive weapons would have taken the fight right out of the gang.

Tatsu stopped her bike on the concrete, stepped off it, and began walking toward the firefight. As she did so, she shifted her personal defence weapon with its underslung grenade launcher into her left hand. She was quite strong enough to use it one-handed. Her machine pistol went in her right hand. Both fired four-millimetre needles at hypersonic velocities. If she had to fire on the Yankees, they were going to really regret it. The men in armour… maybe not so much.

Stopping outside the current field of fire, she lifted her head and shouted. ‘Police! Everyone put your weapons down and surrender or I will use force.’

Of course, no one much was listening, but Tatsu could tell they had noticed her because one of the armoured gunmen turned her way, realigning the aim on his carbine. Tatsu lifted her PDW. A targeting solution appeared in her sensorium instantly and she fired the grenade launcher with a thought. A twenty-five-millimetre slug left the barrel at just under the speed of sound, slamming into the gunman’s stomach and spreading into a plastic blob against his armour. The slugs were designed to deform, transferring as much of their kinetic energy into the target as possible. In all probability, the man would be left with little more than a bruise but being tossed three metres across the concrete was quite enough to make sure he would not be firing on Tatsu any time soon.

‘I said,’ Tatsu yelled, ‘stop firing and lay down your weapons. TYMPD!’

That was when the gunmen vanished. There was a ripple over the surface of their armour, then one, then three, then all of them, including the one Tatsu had hit, disappeared. More or less. They were using a chameleon armour coating, a pretty advanced model at that, but Tatsu’s eyes were better than most and she knew where she was looking. She saw five men, one of them clutching his stomach, running back toward the edge of the park. Ignoring them, she turned and started marching toward the Yankees.

One of them started aiming a rifle at her as she approached and she was just about to give him the same treatment as the armoured gunman when Carter’s voice sounded out from behind a low, concrete wall. ‘Quit firing! Ammo’s expensive!’

Tatsu rolled her eyes. ‘Dex? You still alive?’

Both Carter and Burrell stood up from behind the wall. ‘I’m alive. Looks like ViraShield wanted to know who gave me the info too.’

‘And you have proof that they were ViraShield, obviously.’

‘Who the hell else would it be?!’

Tatsu came to a stop on the other side of the wall which looked as though it was meant to be some sort of backstop for a ballgame. She tilted her head and