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

bodies on the floor in the doorway. One of the ones outside was definitely out of the fight. She was armed just the same as they were too. Things were definitely more even than they had been.

‘I need a bigger handgun,’ she muttered.

‘What?’ Kawaguchi asked.

‘I need a pistol that can take on armour. My machine pistol is fine against unarmoured targets, but if I’m going to have to take on corporate goons, I’ll need something bigger.’

‘You s-seem to be doing fine at the moment.’

‘Because I stole one of their rifles. If I was still using my pistol, I’d run out of ammo before I stopped them.’

‘O-oh.’

Raising her voice, Tatsu yelled, ‘Half of you down. Leave while you can still walk.’

The response she got was one of the ones left running in through the doorway. She put three rounds in the man’s chest from a burst of six, and he fell face first onto the concrete floor. She could not bring her aim around in time, however, as the second man stepped into the doorway and fired. Four needles from his burst hit her in the chest, the remainder peppering the wall behind her. A report appeared in her sensorium indicating that her armour had been penetrated without significant damage.

‘Bastard,’ she said, ‘now I’m going to have to recycle another suit.’ She fired back, putting four rounds into his skull. ‘Next!’ she yelled at the top of her voice.

‘What are you?’ Kawaguchi asked from below her.

There was the sound of an engine starting outside and Tatsu relaxed. ‘What am I? I’m the winner.’

Part Three: Rapture

Chiba Refugee Zone, Japan, 29th July 2099.

Even before the announcements of arrests at ViraShield, their stocks were falling and their customers were jumping ship. At this early stage, it was only the rich who were getting their PIN product replaced. It cost somewhere around three million yen to get a brand-new PIN installed, plus you had likely paid upfront for the update subscription and you would lose that. Most people could not afford that kind of expenditure at a moment’s notice. ViraShield had issued an emergency patch at the start of the week; it would solve the immediate problem for those stuck with their product, but it had not been enough to restore customer trust.

The arrests had just made matters worse. Tatsu watched footage of Hideki Fukui being escorted out of the ViraShield building in handcuffs. He was far from the only one, but he was the one the cameras focused on. That had triggered rapid trading on ViraShield stocks. They were not so much falling as plummeting toward oblivion. ViraShield was a one-product company and that product was doomed. If they could pull their reputation out of the toilet enough to hang on to any market share, it would be a miracle.

‘It just goes to show that diversification in business is key,’ Izanami said, appearing on the street where Tatsu was watching a couple of gangs face off against each other. No one else could see her, of course, but there she was, in broad daylight, on a street in Narashino.

Tatsu kept her reply to the inside of her head. ‘They’re part of a keiretsu. I don’t suppose they considered diversification necessary when other companies in the group did other things.’

‘Perhaps. There has been no video of your arrest of Kurou Kawaguchi, but you did get your name in a number of reports.’

‘Publicity is not something I crave, Izanami.’

‘I’m aware. Three of the men you shot survived. They have been identified as belonging to a mercenary group from Yokohama. Records of their hiring by Hideki Fukui have also been found. He had them on retainer for cases where he could not use ViraShield’s own security personnel.’

‘Never a good sign when a CEO needs mercs on retainer.’

‘True. I can see that man spending the rest of his life in prison. As will Kurou Kawaguchi.’

Tatsu let herself smile. It was still raining and there were not that many people about to see her. The gangs she was watching were getting ready to kick off, so they were paying no attention. ‘Shouldn’t my superiors be telling me this?’

‘Probably, but we both know they won’t.’

‘You have a point. Listen, I know you don’t really like weapons, but I also know you’ve invented a bunch. Do you think you could find me something with a bit more punch than my pistol? Something I could actually carry, obviously. I got lucky with those mercs. I might not be so lucky next time.’

‘I’ll consider some alternatives,’ Izanami replied. ‘There’s going to be a fight over there, isn’t there.’

Tatsu pushed off from the wall she was leaning against and started forward. ‘Only a short one,’ she said.

30th July.

Arkadi Lagounov was not dead in his apartment, but he was dead all the same. His body had been found off one of the tracks in the Funabashi Municipal Sports Park. The name was meaningless now – there was no Funabashi municipality – but it was one of the few green spaces left in the area, making it popular with runners. From his clothing, Lagounov had been out for a run when he had been attacked.

‘I’d be willing to bet he had one or two routes,’ Tatsu said as she looked down at the body. ‘Not enough to make it difficult to ambush him. Just enough for him to think it would be difficult.’

Nakano also looked down at the body, from the other side and from under an umbrella. ‘Looks Russian. Another of the Funabashi gang?’

‘Arkadi Nikolay Lagounov, brigadier of the special projects working group.’

Looking up, Nakano asked, ‘Special projects?’

‘I guess you could call them the real thieves of the gang, but mostly they’re hackers. They steal money directly, rather than extorting it out of shopkeepers or exchanging it for drugs.