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

head had been separated from it. Vasilev was dead, no two ways about it. Turning, Tatsu gave chase.

She hit the emergency stairwell at a run, jumping down entire flights in one go. You could tell this was the emergency stairwell because of the signage saying so – in three languages, Japanese, English, and Russian – and because it was basically undecorated. Under normal circumstances, the doors would not even open unless the building’s computer detected some form of emergency situation, so that system had been hacked.

Tatsu hit the last landing above ground level and was met by a stream of needles. She turned her landing into a drop and roll, and the barrage passed over her head and back. She brought her pistol up to return fire, only to see the robot which had attacked her zipping out through the exterior door. She took the last flight of stairs in two strides and then went out the door in a dive, rolling onto her feet in a fluid movement which brought her up and ready to fire, but the expected stream of needles did not come and, looking around, she spotted the robot accelerating upward and away.

She looked around the alley she had found herself in, but there was no sign of the killer. With a head start and active camouflage that good, there was almost no point in looking. Tatsu was out of the jamming field, however. She put through a request for immediate forensic backup, paramedics, and Nakano. The latter would probably not like being dragged out of bed at two forty-five in the morning, but those were the breaks when you were a cop.

~~~

Nakano looked down at the corpse in the corridor. ‘So, three dead, including the current leader of the Funabashi gang.’

‘Two dead,’ Tatsu replied. ‘Vasilev and a bodyguard.’

‘I was including this robot which you dismantled with extreme prejudice.’

‘Ha ha.’

‘It looks kind of custom and kind of not. Built on a basic chassis and heavily customised, maybe?’

Tatsu nodded. ‘That’s my take. You certainly can’t buy commercial robots armed with fully automatic coilguns at a shop in Akihabara. Our killer has skills. Probably hacked the building computer to open the emergency stairwell. Probably built this thing and its friends. Maybe even designed them. Good with a sword. Cutting someone’s head off isn’t that easy. Also has access to the latest light-military armour. One eighty centimetres, around fifty or sixty kilos. Female.’

‘You think it’s a human, not a gynoid.’

‘I think this is a human. I think this is a human after revenge for something. Or she was and she’s still using that as an excuse.’

‘Maybe less of an excuse this time. She didn’t torture Vasilev.’

‘You may be right… Then again, he knew she was coming and fought back. Maybe she had to kill him quicker than she’d have liked. Whatever, he’s dead, and I didn’t get her. This isn’t going to end well.’

‘War,’ Nakano said flatly.

‘Yeah,’ Tatsu agreed, ‘war.’

Part Five: War

Chiba Refugee Zone, Japan, 5th September 2099.

It started just after dark with three Yankee gangs from the Shiroi territory invading Funabashi Yankee holdings. At first sight it appeared to be the usual gang warfare, but it was coordinated and better equipped than usual. The Shiroi gangsters had military-grade assault weapons and basic body armour. They were acting under direction from the Shiroi gang.

Unfortunately for the Funabashi gang’s subordinates, such direction was in short supply on that side. Infighting among the various Funabashi mafia factions had started no more than twelve hours after Vasilev’s death. There were three potential new bosses, and they were all about as weak as each other with roughly equal support among the lower ranks. Most of the lower-ranking members just wanted someone, anyone, to take command. Right now, they were disorganised and the Shiroi attacks had taken them by surprise. The situation would have turned into a massacre if the riot squads had not turned up to intervene. The Shiroi groups retreated as soon as armed police turned up, but that turn of events was no predictor of what would happen as things got worse.

Tatsu sat in her apartment, wearing combat armour and watching the situation unfold on tactical feeds from HQ and the riot units. No one had asked her to lend a hand yet, so she watched. When things started to get really bad, that was when she would be called in.

There were flare-ups all along the Funabashi territorial borders by midnight. The Chinese gangs were hitting the Mihama Yankees on two fronts, so the tongs had decided that they needed to get involved. There were even reports of Hispanic gangs arriving in Funabashi territory around Mimomi and Yachiyo. But it was still brushfire war, proxy war. None of the major players were getting involved yet. Everyone was acting through the expendable pawns they used to distribute and smuggle drugs.

By the time dawn broke, the fighting had stopped. There had been a few arrests, but nothing major. It was not going to end there.

7th September.

The escalation began in the early hours of Monday morning, but did not really make itself known until darkness fell again that night. Tatsu had spent some time during the day going over a Shiroi drug lab which seemed to have been hit with more precision than might be expected of the local street gangs and had suggested that the major players were starting to act. There had been little to be done about it then, but she had been listened to. She could not fault her superiors for ignoring her.

She continued to not find fault as she worked through a warehouse structure in the docks, backed up by a team of riot officers, as they tried to stop the battle inside from escalating to take in the whole area. It was not easy. They were dealing with