Mortal Kombat

by Jeff Rovin

  Pulling the map from his belt, Kano continued up the slope, wondering how he had gotten himself into this situation. Controlling members of the deadly Black Dragon gang was difficult enough under normal circumstances, but keeping on top of this mix of Black Dragon and melon-minds – this was nearly impossible. The most reliable of the Asia-based members of the gang hadn’t wanted to join Kano, feeling that the story was probably a bunch of hooey and that not only would he never find the amulet, but he probably wouldn’t live to collect the dough that Shang Tsung had promised on delivery of the gem. Of course, none of them knew that the amount was three million bucks, or they might’ve thought differently.

  But Kano had believed Tsung’s emissary, the giant who had come to him at his apartment in Hong Kong. Not even Kano had the guys to tell a trench-coated guy who stood over eight feet tall and looked like an iguana that he was full of baloney – what with his blather about the hidden sun and moon, about the boatmen who would be waiting at this village on the East China Sea, about the island covered with fog and some master who didn’t like to be disappointed.

  Besides, Kano was only staying in Hong Kong because he didn’t have the money to go anywhere else. He had been deported from both Japan and the United States, and was wanted in thirty-five other countries. At this point, if he’d been invited by Martians to help them conquer Venus, he’d have gone – as long as they paid him cash dollars.

  Still, he wished he could have come here with some of the regulars he’d been used to working with. Fei-Hung, the Drunken Master from Korea. Connor, the swordsman from Scotland. Those were pros. Schneider and Moriarty were newcomers, small-time operators who were friends with one of the leaders of the Black Dragon Society. They got in without having to prove themselves on a big solo job, and this was their first assignment. Kano was beginning to think they were big-time losers.

  The other two men in the group were seasoned pros, though Kano felt that Jim Woo was a bit too seasoned for his taste. A former bodyguard from Beijing who used to work for Mao Zedong and drifted from job to job after the leader’s death, Woo was now past retirement age. Though his enthusiasm was surprisingly high, his reflexes were halfway into the Dumpster. If it weren’t for his accuracy with throwing stars and his ability to roll a newspaper so tight it made a passable knife – plus the fact that no one had been rushing to join Kano on his little adventure – Woo wouldn’t have been there.

  Senmenjo-ni was a different kettle of tea, a guy with no field experience and no physical skills. A former banker, a big-time desk-jockey, “Senny” had made the mistake of joining the gold rush when greed became the operative word in the 1980s. He got seriously burned with insider trading and was only able to stay out of jail by agreeing to become an accountant for the Black Dragons. All he brought to this particular party was an ability to speak about twenty bajillion languages, eyeballs that were as sharp as shark’s teeth, and the fact that he was willing to carry more than his share of the supplies they needed. Otherwise, he was Mr. Useless.

  And then there was Gilly.

  Kano had found her through a double agent, a Hong Kong cop who was on the payroll of the Chinese branch of the Black Dragon Society. The lawdude said she was way cool, and he was right – though Kano had had serious reservations about taking her on. He’d worked with a woman once before, which was one time too many. After he and Libby “Liberator” Hall had kidnapped a Bolivian newspaperman who was hounding some big-time money launderers in La Paz, Kano had tried to give her forty percent of the payday and keep sixty percent for himself. Sort of like what he was doing now, only more generous because he liked the cute blonde. Hell, he’d figured, she was a twenty-two-year-old kid who was just starting out, and he was a veteran.

  When he tried to stiff her for the ten percent difference, he almost lost the use of his remaining original eye. He swore he’d never work with a lady again, ‘cause they didn’t reason with you when you had a disagreement: they just stuck a long-nailed thumb in your eye. On the other hand, he had to admit that Libby had been one of the most trustworthy partners he’d ever had, and he had a feeling that Gilly, here, was the same.

  Kano certainly trusted her more than he trusted what the big lug had told him. Chu-jung village… Mt. Ifukube. Names that hadn’t been used in ten centuries, and only that eight-foot-tall guy’s interpretations of other landmarks to guide them. Why didn’t that stinkin’ baby put some useful landmarks down here?

  Part of Kano thought he should’ve followed his initial instincts: taken the two million bucks and bought himself an island somewhere. But while the tall guy hadn’t said as much, Kano knew that one day ole lizard-ears would’ve come wading out of the surf and tried to snap him like a wishbone. Better to do what he was paid to do, collect five million, pay each of the other Black Dragons two hundred thou, and use the four mil that was left to buy a bigger island.

  He couldn’t help but wonder what Gilly would do if she ever found out what he was really being paid. Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t… and even if she did, he could always go back to that Doc Rotwang in Munich and get a new ear or hand or whatever. He could still buy a nice island for three million –

  “Boss!”

  Senny had hurried up behind Kano and tapped him on the shoulder. Kano’s hands shot to the twin pearl-handled daggers he carried in sheaths on his belt; in the space of a heartbeat, the killer had turned and crossed them under the chin of the short, round-faced ex-banker.

  “No, no!” Senmenjo-ni cried. “Don’t hurt me. I see something.” He pointed a trembling finger toward the top of the rise. “Up there!”

  Kano twirled the knives and dropped them back into the sheaths as he turned. Squinting ahead into the setting sun, he saw something that made him smile… if the twisted, chipped-tooth expression on the lower half of his face could be called a smile.

  “C’mon,” he said, hurrying ahead. “I smell good news.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Goro,” Shang Tsung said as he glided across the floor of the palace dining room. “Has the boatman had any word from your man Kano?”

  “No,” said the giant, his voice rumbling like a fortissimo bottom A on the piano. “And Kano was not my man, Master Shang. He was a man… the only man.”

  “This troubles me,” said Shang Tsung as a hooded figure pulled out his ornate gold-and-ivory chair. The master of Mortal Kombat sat, his thin head shaking slowly from side to side. “It has been five days.”

  “I expected it to take at least that long for them to find Kung Lao’s ancestral village,” Goro said, “if in fact it still exists. He said he would send a messenger when he knew, for certain, that he had found it.”

  “The Sherpa said the village exists,” Shang Tsung pointed out, “though it now goes by some other name.”

  “The Sherpa,” said Goro, “would have said anything to save himself.”

  “I believed him,” Shang Tsung said. “The man was too stupid to lie.” He rested his bony hands on the arms of the chair, the sleeves of his richly embroidered green-and-gold robe reaching nearly to the floor. “At least five days to find the village,” Shang Tsung sighed, “and then more days, perhaps weeks of searching to find the mountain. After fifteen hundred years of searching and wondering, Goro, why are these last days so interminable?”

  “Because the prize is so near,” Goro replied in his bull fiddle voice. He fell into a large iron chair at the end of the long burl table. “It is always the way. In battle in the Outworld, I never lamented the foe who escaped me by days, only the ones who eluded me by minutes. In love, I always missed my females more when I was about to see them than when I left them.”

  “You may be right,” Shang Tsung said. “Tell me again why Kano was the best man for this job – why we couldn’t get the man I wanted.”

  Goro reached into the smaller of two bamboo cages set before him, pulled out a small struggling horny toad, and put its head in his mouth. He bit down. “Because the man you wanted, Sub-Zero of the Lin
Kuei ninjas, was not available.”

  “I know that,” Shang Tsung said, his reedy voice impatient. “Why wasn’t he available?”

  Goro used a thick finger to push the rest of the horny toad into his mouth, and after shaking the cage to see what else was in there, he dug through a wriggling layer of garter snakes to pull out a newt. “Because he killed an assassin by the name of Scorpion, and went into hiding. No one knows where in China he is, not even other members of the Lin Kuei.”

  Shang Tsung shook his head. “But you are sure of this other man’s pedigree, this Kano?”

  Goro ate one of the snakes and nodded. “When I couldn’t find Sub-Zero, I learned that both the U.S. Special Forces and the benevolent White Lotus Society were looking for him. He needed the money – but, more importantly, he needed the challenge. He reminded me of Kintaro, a leader in my army in the Outworld. He would like to fight for pay, but if no pay is available he likes to fight just the same.” Goro’s forked tongue played over his thin lips. “These imported snakes are good.”

  “And this society to which he belongs,” said Shang Tsung, “the Black Dragon?”

  Goro popped a second snake into his mouth, slurping in the long, green creature. Pushing away the cage of appetizers with his upper arms, he pulled over the larger cage of entrées with his lower two limbs and threw back the lid. His red eyes went wide with anticipation as he studied the contents. His eyes settled on a Mexican beaded lizard, and he put his top right hand into the cage.

  “They are a group that formed in Tokyo after what is called the Second World War,” Goro said. “Kano was only five years old when they found him, an orphan stealing from American soldiers and natives alike. He had the good fortune to steal from one of the members, who admired his skills and they took him in.”

  “And they say it’s a cruel world,” Shang Tsung said. He gazed toward the portico and at the hills that rolled toward the beach of his island.

  The view looked no different than it had fifteen centuries before, when he and Goro had come here to toast the death of Kung Lao. Nor did he and Goro look any different. Instead of being held every year, the Mortal Kombat tournaments were now held once every generation, in keeping with the different time frame that existed in the Outworld. Goro’s unbroken string of triumphs had made it possible for the two of them to remain the same age they were the day that Kung Lao’s heart and soul had been ripped from his body and sent through the portal to Shao Kahn.

  If only there were some way to reclaim the lost fragments of my own soul, Shang Tsung thought. But he tried not to think like that. What had been lost was irretrievably lost – though the amulet would compensate a great deal for that, if it could be located.

  “But we will make it a better world, Goro,” Shang Tsung said. “With the souls you’ve collected through the years of victories in Mortal Kombat, we have nearly enough to open the Outworld and enable Shao Kahn to cross over.” He gazed at the giant Shokanite as he feasted on a live reptile. Though the venomous creature bit Goro before the giant managed to pull it in half, the Outworlder was immune to its poison. “Once the Lord of Darkness has come here with his hordes of demons and furies, he will remake this sorry place. And when he does, we will assert ourselves as well. You with the help of Kintaro and your army of Salinas… I with the amulet.” Shang Tsung’s dark eyes narrowed. “Assuming that this fool can find it.”

  “He’ll find it,” Goro said around a Gila monster he’d stuffed whole into his wide mouth. “He knows that if he fails, there will be no hiding. Unlike the humans who seek him, I will find him.”

  Shang Tsung raised the metal lid from his own plate, lifted his ivory chopsticks, and began picking at the chunks of broiled goat floating in a stew. He selected a small piece and chewed slowly while he thought back to the Sherpa who had found the map in the mountains and had sold it to one of the combatants in the most recent Mortal Kombat – an American who thought it would fetch a handsome price back in the United States and had refused to sell it to his host. The American’s remains still lay in the three spots on the beach where they landed when Goro flung them from here; they lay right beside the limbless torso of the Sherpa, who was found, brought here, and couldn’t remember where he had discovered the map.

  The old yak, Shang Tsung thought. Too much time spent smoking herbs and not enough paying attention to what was going on around him. That kind of lifestyle would change when Shao Kahn ruled, with Shang Tsung and Goro at his side. There would be no lazing…. People would be forced to build and study and serve. And if they didn’t, they would be flayed alive and roasted.

  Shang Tsung had no appetite, but he forced himself to eat as he contemplated the future and waited for the boat that would bring Kano and the amulet to him….

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As soon as he saw them, the shepherd left his herd and ran toward the village, his legs churning madly, arms flailing, voice shrill.

  “Master Lao!” Chin Chin wheezed. “Master Lao, come quickly!”

  Most of the villagers were in their homes, having a quiet dinner, and so they heard the boy who was always late bringing in his sheep – this night, unhappily so. For if he hadn’t been standing on the rise, the path of the travelers never would have crossed his, and the cruel-looking five men and one woman wouldn’t have been on their way up the hill, toward the village, right now.

  “Master Lao! Please come!”

  The young boy half-ran, half-stumbled over the long hem of his pigskin coat as he made his way past the huts, some of them wood, some of them straw, a few made of brick, toward the temple near the village square.

  As he reached the great bronze door of the ancient edifice, a powerfully built man with a long queue of black hair and a thin white robe stepped out. Though he wore an expression of concern, the man did not seem anxious. His light brown eyes didn’t look as though they could ever show panic, or fear, or anything but the supernatural calm that was in them as faced the boy.

  “What is it, young Chin?” the man asked, his voice soft but firm.

  Breathless and wide-eyed, the boy waved a stiff arm behind him. “Strangers are coming, Priest Kung Lao! Evil-looking strangers are coming up our hill!”

  “It isn’t our hill, my son,” the priest said. “It belongs to whoever uses it. And looks can be misleading,” he said, patting the youth on his shoulder. “But come. Let us go and greet the visitors – and find your flock before they stray again.”

  Shutting the door of the Temple of the Order of Light and motioning for people to return to their homes, the tall, barefoot priest followed the boy in the fast-fading light of dusk down the dirt road to the small village.

  Nearly a quarter of mile of scrub and boulders lay between the edge of the village and the lip of the rise. Kung Lao and the boy met the newcomers halfway across it, the priest bowing as Kano lumbered over.

  “Welcome,” said the high priest, bowing low. “My name is Kung Lao.”

  Kano looked the man up and down. “Ain’t you cold?” he asked as he swatted himself with his arm. “I’m freezin’, and I got clothes under this jacket.”

  “There is a fire in the hearth at the temple,” Kung Lao said, stretching a hand behind him, “and warm broth in the cauldron. You are all invited to share both.”

  “A cauldron,” muttered Moriarty. “I thought only witches had those.”

  “Shaddup,” Kano said from the side of his mouth. “Where’s yer manners?”

  “Same place as your sense of direction,” Moriarty grumbled.

  “What’d you say?” Kano fired a look at him. He saw Gilda standing between them, her hand on the hilt of her blade, and his look softened.

  “Priest,” Gilda said, “we accept your offer, and thank you for your hospitality. If you’d lead the way–”

  “With pleasure,” said Kung Lao. “It’s rare that we get visitors here, and I’m anxious to hear of the outside world.”

  “‘Rare’ is probably an understatement,” said Kano, motioni
ng his team forward as the priest turned and started toward the village. The leader of the gang snarled at Chin Chin, who yipped and rejoined Kung Lao, after having been transfixed by Kano’s red eye.

  As they crossed the barren field, Senmenjo-ni hurried to catch up to Kung Lao.

  “Sir,” said the hound-faced forty-year-old with thinning red hair, “you just spoke English to the group.”

  “Yes,” said Kung Lao. “In addition to religion, I teach languages to the people of my village. It enables them to dip into the lore and cultures of many races. You all speak it, don’t you?”

  “We do,” Senny said, “but it’s unusual to hear it spoken in the provinces here. Usually, one hears of dialects of Cantonese or Mandarin–”

  “I speak those as well, of course,” said Kung Lao. “Languages are a passion of mine.”

  “Mine, too!” said the former accountant.

  “Not mine,” said Kano, inserting himself between the two men. “Senny, go to the back of the line before you start cluckin’ in Tibetan or Mongolian or some crap like that. I want to talk to the father, here.”

  His expression dour, Senmenjo-ni fell back. After blowing his cold hands, Kano turned his scruffy countenance toward their host.

  “So,” said Kano. “What’s the name of this little town of yours, anyway?”

  “The current name is Wuhu,” Kung Lao said.

  “Very many,” said the priest, “depending upon who was ruling the country at the time. When Mao was alive, we were Dzedungu. Before he came to power, our village was known as Tekkamaki.”

  “Didja ever hear of a place called Chu-jung?” Kano asked.

  “I have,” Kung Lao smiled. “That was the name our village went by back when it was first founded, back in A.D. 300.”

  Kano’s sour face looked as though it had been splashed with sunshine. “Yer kiddin’.”

  “No,” said Kung Lao.

  “Jeez,” Kano said, looking back at his team and giving them two thumbs-up. “We came here hopin’ t’get directions to Chu-jung… not to actually find the place!”