Mortal Kombat: The Movie Read online

  Mortal Kombat

  A Novel by Martin Delrio

  Based on the Motion Picture

  Written by Kevin Droney

  MORTAL KOMBAT!

  In the blink of an eye, Shang changed form, his body shifting into the appearance of a man in samurai’s armor, sword raised over his head.

  At the same moment an enormous ball of blue, crackling fire swept down through the hold. Electric discharges flew from the ball, and its light showed the group in startling detail. Sonya and Johnny stood back to back, each in a defensive stance, their form perfect. Their ninja opponents stood facing them, also in stance. Any icy fog lay about the feet of the ninja facing Sonya, while a serpent protruded from the hand of the ninja opposite Johnny.

  The ball of blue lightning came smashing through…

  PROLOGUE

  Swish – swish – swish.

  Chan was sweeping the ancient stones of the courtyard with a rice-straw broom.

  Dawn was coming, the sun rising in splendor across the bay. The first rays turned the roof of the pagoda, the Temple of the Order of Light, into golden fire behind him.

  Swish – swish – swish.

  The air was warm and yet clear. Chan felt simple satisfaction in performing his task well. But more than that, he felt pride. Pride in being chosen as the defender. Pride in the training he had received, and that he was continuing to receive, to fight in the Great Tournament.

  As the descendant of Kung Lao, it was Chan’s place to defend the Order of Light. And he would not fail. Not like his brother, who had forsaken the old ways and fled to America.

  He thought briefly of Liu Kang, his brother. Liu was, perhaps, a better fighter, but he did not have faith.

  Chan was startled out of his reverie by the sound of birds. All of the pigeons who roosted under the pagoda’s eaves had suddenly taken wing. He looked up, still holding his broom.

  No one was there, except one man – a stranger – walking slowly across the worn stones which Chan had just swept. The startled flock of pigeons whirled, then flew off rapidly across the bay. Chan had never seen them act like that, and despite the warm air of the morning, he felt a chill.

  The man approached. When he had come within a double arm’s reach, he halted.

  The stranger’s face was young, and his body was hard under his rich silks. And his mouth was cruel.

  “Chan? Are you Chan?” the stranger said, his words forming a question although his tone said he already knew.

  “Yes,” Chan replied. “That is me.”

  “You think that you are to fight to defend the Earth,” the stranger said. “That is not to be.”

  Chan looked at the stranger warily. “Perhaps you are mistaken, honored one.”

  “I never make mistakes in that regard,” the man replied. He dropped into a fighting stance, his feet widely spaced, his hands floating at waist-level before him.

  Chan gazed into the man’s eyes, and then he knew. The eyes were dark, deep and dark, with fire burning far away within them.

  Demon eyes.

  Chan bowed and took his own stance. “So this is the way it is to be,” he said.

  “Regrettably, yes,” the demon replied. “Every man chooses his own path. You chose the wrong one.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Hey, Lieutenant!”

  The radio intercept operator looked up from his console. Sweat was beaded on his forehead, his crew-cut hair damp where it wasn’t covered by the heavy earphones. He’d taken off the camouflage-uniform blouse and hung it over the back of his chair. The Army T-shirt he wore was a darker shade of brown around the neck and armpits from the perspiration.

  “Yes? What do you have?”

  Lieutenant Sonya Blade walked forward to stand behind the intercept operator. It was just as hot for her as for the operator inside in the intercept van, but she wasn’t showing it. Blonde hair, pinned up in military fashion, was perfectly arranged on her head. Her cammie uniform was pressed with sharp creases, every button buttoned. Her back was straight without being braced, her eyes clear and alert. First in her class at the Academy, first in her class in Basic Infantry training, first in her class at Special Warfare school, Lieutenant Blade wasn’t about to let a little discomfort rattle her cage.

  “We have them located, ma’am. Crimmons, Shamoboa, Kano. They’re on the phone with each other, talking about their operations – conference call. I’m getting everything.” The man jerked his thumb at the big reels of tape slowly turning on the wall of the van.

  “You’d think they’d use scramblers.”

  “They are, lieutenant.” The radio intercept operator allowed himself to smile. “With the gear we have here, it doesn’t do them a damn bit of good.”

  “Very well,” Lieutenant Blade said. “Get me a triangulation on their positions. If anything changes, inform me. I’ll be in the command post.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the operator said, and leaned forward to tweak a dial.

  Lieutenant Blade opened the back door of the van and stepped out into the bright noonday sun. Leaving the enclosed space hadn’t done a thing for the heat of a Hong Kong summer. She paused for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the glare, then stepped off in the direction of the command post.

  The command post for the elite Joint Eurasian Anti-Drug Task Force wasn’t much bigger than the van, but the air conditioning worked a lot better. The room’s only decoration was a Thompson submachine gun in a display case on the wall.

  Sonya walked in, and two men looked up from the table where they’d been studying a map.

  “Good day, Sonya,” said the taller of the two, his face breaking into an easy smile. “What cheer from the world of electronic intelligence?” He had a light accent. It could have been British, but was, in fact, Dutch.

  She returned his smile. “The kingpins. All three of them.”

  “Ah.” Lieutenant Bill van Hoven of the Royal Netherlands Marines regarded her with calm respect.

  “I tell you what. Since you found them, I’ll let you plan the operation to take them in,” said the other man. He was a trim, well-muscled African-American with a major’s gold oak leaves on his collar. The name strip above the right breast pocket of this uniform read BRIGGS.

  “Take them in or take them out, it’s all the same to me,” van Hoven said.

  “You’re entirely too bloodthirsty, Bill,” Major Briggs said. Jackson Briggs, known to his fellow officers as Jax, had long cultivated the philosophical approach. He stood at ease in the command post, and his tone was light and bantering as he continued. “Law enforcement in support of civilian authorities should be performed with the minimum amount of violence, and always with a regard for the finer things in life.”

  “You’re the boss,” Lieutenant van Hoven replied. He stepped aside to allow Sonya a place at the map table.

  She leaned forward and marked positions on the map with a grease pencil. “A reinforced special-tactics platoon, divided into six half-squads, with the fourth squad held in reserve, should just about do it.”

  “I don’t much care about the other bad guys,” van Hoven said. He tapped his finger on one of the positions that Sonya had just marked. “You’re in tactical command. But Kano – he’s mine.”

  “You want the pleasure?” Sonya asked.

  “Yes. I’ve been following that son of a bitch around the globe for the last three years. I want to be there when it ends.”

  “This time he won’t get away,” Jax said.

  “I know,” van Hoven said, with the same smile. “Sonya is planning the operation; nothing will go wrong.”

  And that, Sonya reflected bitterly, some hours later, was the last thing that had gone right. The whole operation was SNAFU f
rom the time the first team jumped out of the choppers. It was almost as if the bad guys had known they were coming.

  She crouched in the shadow of a brick wall, her weapon ready and her eyes moving even while she spoke. “All units in Black Hawk, this is Cardinal,” she said, the small microphone on her headset transmitting her words to the other members of the team. “Report.”

  “This is Echo One,” came an answer almost immediately. “No sign of target individual. Three troopers down. We’re taking fire.”

  “This is Green Dragon,” came another voice. It sounded like Rodriguez, assistant squad leader of the second squad. That he was answering up meant Moresby couldn’t, and that wasn’t good. “Nobody home at this location. We’re taking casualties from booby traps.”

  Sonya paused for a moment, waiting for the third team to answer. The radio link was silent. When the silence had gone on too long, she spoke: “Bell Whiskey, report.”

  Silence.

  “Bell Whiskey, report,” she repeated, more urgently.

  “I don’t think they’re on the air,” Major Jax said, his voice coming from the radio over the command net from headquarters.

  “Neither do I.”

  She keyed the microphone to the tactical net again.

  “Green Dragon, withdraw. Go to Echo One’s assistance. When you can extract Echo One, everyone fall back to the rendezvous position and form a perimeter.”

  “Echo One, roger, out,” came the first reply, followed almost immediately by “Green Dragon, roger, out.”

  “That’s taken care of,” Sonya said. “Okay.” She pointed at three of the troopers in the reserve squad. “Come on. You and me, we’re going to find Lieutenant Bill van Hoven. The rest of you, back to the rendezvous point. Hold it until everyone else gets in. I’ll join you there shortly.”

  The small group led by Lieutenant Blade set out through the streets and alleys, heads up and weapons at the ready. The part of Hong Kong they’d been in wasn’t the greatest, and where they were going was even worse. It was the sort of place that gave slums a bad name.

  Alleyways, already narrow and dark, got narrower and darker. Sonya flipped down her night-vision goggles in order to see where she was going. The eerie green glow of the goggles made the entire place seem unreal, like it was deep under water or on another planet.

  That was when she found him.

  Lieutenant Bill van Hoven lay prone on the garbage-strewn pavement, one of his arms under his head as if he were asleep. A pool of blood surrounded him.

  “Located Bell Whiskey,” Sonya reported on the command net. “Bell Whiskey actually appears to be hurt. Going to assist, over.”

  “Be careful, Cardinal, over.”

  “I’m always careful,” Sonya replied. “Out.”

  She slung her weapon and went forward to kneel beside the other lieutenant. He wasn’t breathing. No pulse. Her own heartbeat sounded loud in her ears.

  “This wasn’t part of my plan,” she whispered.

  One of the troopers came up beside her, reached out and turned Bill van Hoven over. His eyes were open and staring, an expression of horror on his face. And his throat had been cut so deep that Sonya was afraid for a moment that his head might come off entirely.

  “Kano,” she said, keying the mike on her headset. “Kano set this up. He made sure we could intercept his messages. He planned it. We never had a chance.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Do?” Sonya laughed bitterly. “After tonight the investigation is blown. Five years of work down the tubes. But first I’m going to find Kano. And I’m going to kill him. With my bare hands, if necessary.”

  “Kano isn’t within a mile of your location,” Jax said, the scrambler on the circuit making his voice scratchy.

  “No, but I think I know where to find him. The Techno Club.”

  “I’ll meet you there,” Jax replied over the radio. “Don’t go in without backup.”

  “What makes you think I would, sir?” Sonya asked.

  “I know you, Blade,” Jax’s answer came in her earpiece. “At the Techno Club, in ten. Black Hawk out.”

  Sonya stood, unslinging her riot gun from her back and bringing it to the ready position.

  “Okay,” she muttered. “Kano, this one’s for you. You have just succeeded in pissing me off.”

  “Art! Lean! Art! Lean!”

  It was the final round of the World Freestyle Karate Championships. Full contact. Full speed. And the crowd was on its feet, chanting, their voices filling the Stockholm arena.

  Art Lean, a handsome, muscular African-American, shook his head to sling the sweat out of his eyes and twisted on his feet to find his opponent. When he moved, his legs moving like pistons, his skin gleaming like polished ebony, the referee scurried to stay out of his way.

  Art changed his stance again, easy and slow, ready for anything. His opponent, Caesar Cerant, the Belgian national champion, was good – but Art knew he was better.

  But where was Cerant now? The ring was small, nowhere to hide…

  “Behind me,” Art muttered, and leapt straight up, just as a reaping kick from behind came in, fast enough to make the air whistle. It would have been enough to hamstring a man, perhaps break his leg, had it connected – but Art wasn’t there. He turned a somersault in midair, twisting like a cat. There was his opponent, off balance and out of position, trying to recover from the missed kick.

  “Art! Lean! Art! Lean!” the crowd roared again.

  Art landed in a crouch. Then, without pausing for a second, he launched himself forward again, his right hand shooting out in a heel-hand strike, directly into Caesar’s torso, just beneath the point of his breastbone. The Belgian went pale, the breath driven out of him. But he still began to take a stance, ready to renew his attack.

  “Not so fast, sucker,” Art breathed. The American spun, the edge of his foot taking the Belgian in the back of one knee, while at the same time Art’s forearm slammed into the front of his opponent’s chest at the level of his collarbone. His opponent fell backward, fast. He hit the canvas and lay on his back. In a flash Art was kneeling beside him. The tall African-American smashed his palm down toward the Belgian’s face, his arm moving almost too fast to see. He stopped a fraction short of the delicate cartilage in the man’s nose, a fraction short of the killing blow.

  “It’s over,” Art said, standing.

  And all at once, the referee was there, raising his hand, while another man was attaching something heavy around Art’s waist: the championship belt. Attendants fluttered around the fallen man, reviving him, checking his vital signs, his reflexes.

  Art stood tall, paying no attention to those around him. His hands were raised in the victory salute, while the crowd surrounding the arena chanted his name, louder and louder.

  Then it was indeed over. Art shrugged on his robe, black with scarlet trim, and climbed between the ropes. Head high, he strode toward the dressing room.

  A massage would sure feel good right about now, he thought. A massage, a shower, and about twelve hours of sleep. The door to the small dressing room banged shut behind him.

  Surprisingly, he found himself alone. The crowd was missing. No trainers, no reporters looking for an interview. Nothing but his locker and the padded massage table.

  He turned to leave, to see where everyone had gone, but his eye caught a small object lying on the table. It was a scroll, a strip of tight white paper rolled around twin sticks of hard black wood. A red ribbon bound the scroll closed, and a large seal of black wax hung from the ribbon.

  Without knowing why, Art felt his blood run cold. The scroll was out of place here, he thought, trying to make sense of the unexpected sensation. It was wrong, an artifact from the ancient past come unstuck in time.

  Art approached it slowly, as if hypnotized by the object. He nudged the seal with his finger. Nothing, just a plain disk of wax. For no apparent reason he got the same feeling of being watched that he had experienced in the ring, when
Caesar Cerant had gotten behind him.

  Art glanced back over his shoulder. No one was there.

  Then, impulsively, he reached out with his left hand and flipped the seal over. It bore a design on the other side: a stylized dragon head in a circle. The dragon’s tongue curled out, forked into a double point; its eyes were narrow and evil.

  Art knew, deep in his bones, that this was something he shouldn’t even mess with. But at the same time he knew that he wasn’t going to rest until he knew everything about the scroll and what it contained. He picked up the scroll.

  Without allowing himself a pause for second thoughts, he broke the seal.

  “What a hell of a way to make a living.”

  Johnny Cage paused outside the doors of the warehouse. The Florida sun glinted off his dark glasses.

  He pulled his pistol from the holster hidden under his Italian-tailored sportcoat. With his other hand he pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to show a detective’s gold shield. He pushed the back of the ID holder into his breast pocket so the shield was displayed, then straightened.

  “Only one chance to do it right. I’ve got another assignment starting tomorrow.”

  He counted slowly to himself, from ten down to one. On one he dodged in through the open door of the warehouse. Johnny paused on the inside to take stock.

  “I’m a cop,” he recited, getting his head to where it had to be. “The chief hates me, thinks I’m a cowboy. My partner’s on the take. The other cops think I’m a crook like my partner. I’ve got to prove myself.”

  He looked over the contents of the warehouse. From where he stood, he could see that the warehouse was jammed with fifty-five gallon drums stenciled with their contents: acetone, diethyl ether, caustic soda.

  “Bingo,” he said, quietly. “All the ingredients for extracting cocaine. Looks like someone’s setting up a drug lab.”

  Another thought: “That stuff’s all flammable, explosive, or corrosive. One stray shot in here and the whole place could go up.”

  He shoved his pistol back into its holster, and with infinite care began to make his way into the cavernous warehouse.