The Little Dragon straightened up. ‘Be careful with that, Kell. It's a...’

‘A Mauser and Gray M-27 needle pistol.’ I drew it smoothly and my right hand snapped the charging lever back with a sharp, metallic click. ‘It shoots a cloud of plastic flechettes shaved from a block of high-grade ballistic polymer. Practical rate of fire is 200 shots per minute, with an average ot 15 needles per shot.’ I smiled. ‘Why does everyone think a MechWarrior is useless outside his 'Mech?’

She bowed her head. ‘Sumimasen,Kell- san.I believed you were witless to embark on this fool's mission in the first place.’ She turned, opening her hands to encompass the whole apartment. ‘This is my home. Please, be my guest.’

I heard a trace of reluctance in her voice as she spoke. ‘Why is it that you are so uneasy about having me here?’

She stiffened, then slowly began to explain. ‘You found me because you were searching for the Little Dragon. Out there,’ she said, pointing toward the windows, ‘that is what I am. Because I know certain things and certain people, I can get things done. The Yakuza and l have a truce because I care for the people of Akumashirrfa. and they are part of this hellhole. They will not form an alliance with me because I am a woman, but as the Little Dragon, I have earned their respect.’

She moved to the cushions on the floor, but pointed me to the couch. ‘That is what I am out there. But that stops outside the door. In here, I can be myself.’ She glanced over at the painting of a snow-capped mountain seen through a gap in a pine forest. ‘I can indulge myself by painting or writing haiku or reading. I can do anything here, or nothing, yet none of the worries of the Little Dragon concern me. Here I am Takara, and here that is enough.’

With a nod to show my interest, I seated myself on the floor, resting my back against the couch. My position, though somewhat uncomfortable, left me with my head lower than hers, allowing her the respect due in her own home. ‘This is your sanctuary, Takara.’ She frowned when I spoke her name aloud, but I liked the sound of it.

She considered my comment for a moment, then nodded slowly. ‘It is.’ Abruptly, she grimaced as though tasting something bitter and an edge came into her voice. ‘Or, it wasmy sanctuary. Now the Little Dragon has brought you here. It could all be ruined.’

The anger in her tone stung me. ‘Hey. I didn't hold a gun to your head. You didn't have to agree to help me locate Hanako.’

She fixed me with a stare so fierce that I felt it might sear right through me. ‘Didn't I? You come to me with the story of saving an Untouchable's child and you expect me not to help you?’ She poked a thumb against her chest. ‘I know what happens to sawararenaibabies when their father is a foreign devil mercenary. Hold a gun to my head? Dammit. Kell, you might as well have clipped a chain to my renketsuand bound me to you. I could not refuse your request.’

She stood angrily and pointed toward the hallway off in the corner. ‘That leads to the bathroom, first door on your right. My bedroom is at the end of the hallway, but don't go any further than the bathroom. I won't have you despoil everything.’

She marched to the door, then turned back to address me like an Admiral on a ship's bridge giving orders to her crew. ‘I'm going out to find Hanako Aido. Don't stir from this place, and don't open the door.’ Again I heard the electric notes as she punched a code into the number pad beside the door. ‘If it's opened without the proper code being entered, a pressure-sensitive switch will set off an explosive underneath the landing and splash whoever is standing here all over the ceiling.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘If there's a fire?’

The angry expression on her face did not lighten at all. ‘You die.’

A week's flight in-system on the DropShip Newport Newsand a day of skulking through Akumashima had really taken it out of me. When Takara closed the door behind her, I sank into the cushions. They smelled of jasmine and felt very soft. Having learned a long time ago the MechWarrior's trick of catching sleep when and where available, I dropped off immediately.

I normally recall nothing of my dreams, but the one I had in Takara's sanctuary had a surreality to it that would do credit to those new holovids that are so popular with kids these days. A madman dressed in a surgeon's smock stood over me, his right eye magnified by a huge lens. The blood vessels in his eye pulsed like scarlet lightning. He said something like, ‘Well, Colonel, we must root those secrets out somehow. We will start with your toes.’ Then he flicked on a vibroblade and moved down toward the foot of the table to which I'd been strapped.

His assistant grabbed my head in both hands to ensure that I could not see what the madman was doing. I looked up at his aide and stared directly into the Little Dragon's eyes. They were cold and joyless, yet her face lit with delight as the vibroblade's hum increased in intensity. She leaned forward to kiss me, then opened her mouth to reveal row upon row of shark's teeth...

I sat up with a start, wide awake and in a cold sweat that had soaked my clothes. I shook my head to clear it, but the vibroblade's hum still rang in my ears. I dropped a hand to the blade in my belt, my foggy mind slowly realizing that I'd already know if it had accidently been turned on.

Suddenly, I located the source of the sound and looked up toward the door as someone finished using the vibroblade to saw through the bolt-plate.

I dropped back flat against the pillows, opening my mouth and cupping my hands over my ears as the door swung inward. The first man to step onto the landing evaporated amid a cloud of bloody fire and black smoke. A column of flame blasted a jagged hole up through the ceiling, -and the explosion's Shockwave shattered the windows and all the glass over Takara's paintings. Debris shot like fiery meteorites all over the apartment and stung me on the hands and face.

The second man fell through the landing and down into whatever the Little Dragon had waiting in the apartment below her own. A third man. his face blackened from the blast, leaped into the room, but slipped on broken shards of glass and dropped awkwardly to one knee.

I drew the M & GM - 27, flipped the safety off, and snapped two shots at him. One cloud of plastic needles blew through his shoulder, reducing it to torn flesh and bone fragments. The impact twisted him enough that my second shot destroyed his face.

Two more individuals appeared in the doorway, shoving the snouts of ugly sub-machineguns through the ruined portal. They fired blindly, but because of the sunken nature of the living room, the shots passed over my head. The bullets tore staggered lines across the apartment's walls as the spent cartridges flowed in a brass river down what was left of the stairs.

I triggered four shots at the people in the doorway. Both my targets screamed, keeping out of sight. Their continued screaming told me I'd not killed them, and that made me angry. For half a second, I wanted to swing around, shoot out into the hallway and, if necessary, hunt them down. They have violated this place. They must die!

Sanity reasserted itself and brought with it the vision of the Little Dragon from my dream. She must have set you up, Patrick. Don't avenge your betrayer.Firing two more shots into the doorway, I bolted for the balcony and leaped through one of the empty-paned windows.

The balcony was awash in blood. The raiders had stationed two men there to cut off all retreat from the frontal assault. When the windows blew out, they had fragmented into a typhoon of razored glass. Most of one raider had been blown back over the balcony, and what was once the second raider lay leaking in the far comer.

Standing on the balcony rail. I cautiously peeked up over the lip of the building's root. Aside from the hole ripped in it by the explosion, it looked quiet and safe. The small yellow flames of tar burning around the hole's edge cast enough light to make me certain no one lay waiting in ambush.