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

Of course, the problem with using a hotel as a base of operations was that it was very difficult to secure every way in. They had barricades in the foyer, always manned by at least two people, and there was a guard on the rear door. But there was a fire escape up the rear wall and they were relying on the building’s security system to detect anyone coming in through any of the fire doors. Similarly, there was an access door onto the roof that was only protected by a sensor which detected it opening. Up there, no one had even thought to install a camera covering the stairs down to the top floor. The emergency staircase was only covered by a camera on the ground floor.

It took her all of a minute to bypass the sensor on the rooftop door. She sent her one surviving drone in ahead of her, watching the feed from its camera on the inside of her helmet as it floated down the stairwell for a couple of levels to make sure she would not be observed before she wanted to be. Then she drew the sword at her hip and set off into the old hotel with murder on her mind.

~~~

‘I just got off,’ Sachiko said from a call window in Tatsu’s sensorium. ‘Want to hang out?’

‘You mean bang,’ Tatsu replied.

‘Well, I– We could go grab something to eat. Or watch a vid and snuggle. Or… something.’

Tatsu grinned. ‘Snuggle. Right. I–’

Alert! Shots fired at watch location Makuharicho 1. No intruder detected. Alert!

‘Something up?’ Sachiko asked.

‘Yeah.’ Tatsu grabbed her pistol from her desk and started for the door of her apartment. ‘You’re going to have to wait for tomorrow night. Sorry.’

‘When duty calls, I guess.’

‘Believe me when I say I’d rather be snuggling with you.’

‘Who in their right mind would not?’

~~~

A 12-gauge shotgun slug slammed into her side just over the bottom of her ribcage and her suit instantly hardened to absorb the damage. It was the third and it added another bruise to her collection; the suit was good at stopping bullets, but the impacts still stung. So far, none of the soft-tissue damage was impairing her performance.

Turning, she slashed the gunman across his right bicep. His arm dropped to the floor, followed by his shotgun and then his body. She made sure of the kill by stabbing him through the right eye, and then she turned to the door of the gaudily decorated room, seeking her next victim. She had already cleared the top floor, but there were so many more of them to eliminate. It was like cutting down wheat.

Another slug whistled past her head as she walked out and she began running, her sword held low for an upward slash. The shooter was at the other end of the corridor, but she charged in with little care for her safety, confident in her armour. She would slash his stomach and he would die in agony. A thin, malicious grin stretched her lips. She was doing what she had always been meant to do, and she loved it.

~~~

Tatsu barrelled into the lobby through the main entrance and was immediately met by a hail of shotgun pellets. Only five of the dozens of lead balls actually managed to hit her and they did not even slow her down, but they did make her annoyed.

‘I’m here to help, idiot! Stop shooting–’

This time he managed to get more of the tiny slugs to hit. Her damage-control system counted nine impacts. A baton round accelerated out of her pistol and slammed into his chest. It tossed him two metres backward and into the wall behind him with a crash, and he did not get up after falling to the worn carpet. A second man emerged from a door on the left, probably something to do with reception, maybe a manager’s office. This one had an assault rifle. Tatsu blasted him back through the door he had just come through and headed for the corridor at the back of the lobby. If she was lucky, they were both unconscious, but there was no time right now for checking.

In the core of the building, there was an elevator and an open staircase. Tatsu hit the stairs, taking them three at a time. There were six floors, each with two flights of stairs and a landing between them. There was also the sound of gunfire coming down the stairwell, which was generally a bad sign. Still, she encountered no one until she was climbing to the fourth floor, and then the people she encountered were not going to stop her. Three bodies lay on the landing between floors, all of them looking like they were victims of a rapid-fire coilgun attack. One of Kaede’s robots was up here or had been. Tatsu rounded the corner, leading with her pistol.

A spray of needles erupted from the hovering bot; the thing had been waiting, covering the stairwell. Only one of the projectiles actually hit home and Tatsu ignored it as she returned fire. Three rounds rocketed out from her pistol, and the robot attempted to slide to the side to avoid her aim. It failed, but Tatsu still had baton rounds loaded. There was a horrendous whine as the robot’s fans tried to compensate for the sudden transfer of kinetic energy, and the machine slammed into the wall across the corridor before dropping out of the air. Its motors were still whining, however, and Tatsu ducked out of sight behind the staircase to change magazines.

The bot was floating again by the time she popped back out. It opened fire immediately, scoring a couple of hits which failed to penetrate Tatsu’s body armour. They also failed to throw her aim off. The tiny missile