The Martian Falcon (Lovecraft & Fort) by Alan K Baker Page B

Pauly.’
    ‘Dat’s okay.’
    Still brandishing his modified Thompson, Capone flexed one piston-driven leg and kicked the rear passenger door clean off its hinges. It skittered across the scarred asphalt towards the two vampire cars, which had come to a halt behind the limo.
    The cars were Duesenbergs, their styling aggressive and elegant, and entirely in keeping with the nature of their occupants. Their black paintwork glinted in the sunlight, as did the highly-polished chrome of their radiator grilles and headlamps. Their heavily-tinted windshields were like the black sunglasses of implacable assassins.
    Capone climbed from the limousine and stood before them with his steel legs planted firmly apart upon the road, ignoring the honks and squealing tyres of the oncoming traffic that swerved to avoid the wreck. ‘All right, you nightwalkin’ cocksuckers!’ he shouted. ‘You wanna dance? Then let’s dance!’
    The doors of the Duesenbergs opened, and eight vampires emerged. They were dressed entirely in black, right down to their shirts and ties, and each wore a black leather mask which completely covered his head. Their eyes were hidden behind goggles as heavily tinted as the windows of their cars. From inside the limo, Fort could see that a couple of them were standing awkwardly, half bent over. They must have been the ones who were hit by Capone’s shells: the holy water must have seeped through the fabric of their suits, eating into their skin like acid.
    ‘Buncha deadbeats!’ shouted Capone. ‘Think you can take me, huh? Then let’s go!’
    ‘What do you think our chances are of emerging from this altercation alive?’ asked Lovecraft.
    Fort glanced at him. ‘Not great, Howard. Not great.’ He hesitated, then added: ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘It’s my aunts I feel sorry for,’ Lovecraft replied. ‘My death will hit them very hard.’ There was sadness and resignation in his voice, but no fear. Fort gave him a longer look but said nothing.
    They returned their attention to the scene outside the limo. Capone had trained his weapon on the vampires, who had in turn brought their Thompsons to bear on him. Fort noted that they were aiming high: when the shooting started, they would go for headshots, since it would be futile to fire at Capone’s massive, armoured body.
    As far as Fort knew, Capone’s head was as vulnerable to injury as his body once had been. He didn’t give much for the Diesel-Powered Gangster’s chances against the vampires: bullets filled with holy water was a good idea on paper, but in practice all it seemed to have done was piss them off even more.
    And when they were done with Capone…
    Fort glanced again at Lovecraft. ‘It’s been nice knowing you, Howard,’ he said.

CHAPTER 13
The Telaug Machine
    Rusty Links had been mistaken when she assumed that Crystalman was in danger from the Deros. It was understandable enough, of course, since he had not been strictly accurate when he told her that he was simply occupying caverns that they had long ago abandoned.
    The fact was that he had taken these upper chambers from them, and they had capitulated without a fight. They were well aware of his reputation, not to mention his true identity: the penetray machines which they kept in the deeper caverns and through which they observed events in the upper world told them that it would not do to make an enemy of Crystalman.
    His reputation had preceded him, even into the nighted realms of the Inner Earth.
    The Deros had left behind much that was useful to Crystalman when they had departed these upper chambers, including several of the fantastic machines which were their inheritance from the long-vanished civilisation that had spawned them. One of the machines contained the thought-records of the Atlans, the spacefaring race that had come from the uncharted interstellar gulfs to colonise Earth in the far-off night of prehistory.
    For countless millennia, the Atlans had lived in peace and utopian