Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘My God, Evelyn,’ she groaned. ‘Evelyn!’

Evelyn’s only thought was to grip on to the strutting of the seat as tightly as she could. Unable to scream, she tried to picture the vehicle as a beetle, within which she would be protected as long as she managed not to lose her grip. Momoka had disappeared. There was no up or down any more, only bumps and dust and more bumps, smashing the chassis to pieces. Finally, she did let go. She fell to the ground and stared up at a wheel wobbling above her.

The rover had come to a halt, and she was alive. So far.

She immediately tried to free herself from the wreck, but she was stuck. But where? Her arms were free. She kicked her legs forcefully, and she could move them too, but the pile of junk still didn’t want to let her go. The ground shuddered as something colossal rammed into the regolith, right next to her, and with icy clarity she realised what it was.

‘Evelyn!’ Amber. ‘Evelyn!’

‘I’m stuck,’ she screamed. ‘I’m stuck!’

The ground trembled again.

The robots only react to one another; we’re not present in their internal image .

She had to get out of here! As fast as she could!

She began to pull wildly at the frame, scared out of her wits, but it was as if she were rooted to it, as if her back were soldered to the rover. She began to howl like a wolf in a trap, because she knew she would die.

Julian brought his rover to a standstill right next to the wreckage. He didn’t care in the slightest what Hanna and Momoka were doing. The two of them had disappeared on the other side of the mining machine, away from the gluttonous shovelling.

They had to get Evelyn out of there.

Rogachev and Amber jumped from their seats and hurried over to the wrecked vehicle. Evelyn stretched her arm out towards them. It wasn’t hard to see that her backpack had wedged itself into the grotesquely twisted strutting and was alarmingly stuck. Julian, overcome with worry, dared to glance up. The colossal body of the machine was making its way unrelentingly forward, darkening the sky, bathing the plain, people and vehicles in its ravine-like shadow. The strutting of its armoured plates was visible only in silhouette: rivets, seams and bolts, the trichina mechanism of the pipes. The insectoid curve of the skull with its chewing apparatus, sieves and mining belts swayed slowly back and forth, as if the thing were picking up their scent. Conically formed hip joints sprang out from angled legs, each around ten metres high, multiple-jointed and as thick as the crossbeams of a building crane.

The crashed rover lay directly in its path.

At that moment, in a way that was more perceptible than it was visible, the leg right at the front of its body lethargically began to rise.

Hanna struggled to get his bearings.

He had hit the back of his head on the inner casing of his helmet, something which should have been practically impossible, because the head covering was supposed to be large enough to prevent such accidents. His skull and neck hurt, and his shoulder too had seen better days, but at least the armour seemed to have absorbed some of the collision. He could move his arms still, but the weapon with the explosive bullets had fallen from his hand.

He couldn’t lose his weapon!

Red and yellow circles were rotating in front of his eyes, trying to suck away his consciousness. Half blinded, he stumbled a few steps forwards, fell on his knees, then shook his head and fought against a strong wave of nausea.

Momoka was just a few steps behind him.

She rushed along, fuelled by hate. Like Medea, Electra, Nemesis, she was the incarnation of vengeance, unchecked by reason, without fear, without any plan. All thought processes were brought to a standstill; her thoughts were ruled purely by the idea of killing Hanna, and she didn’t care how.

Something on the ground caught her gaze.

Something long and light in colour. It reminded her of a gun, but there was no trigger, just some buttons.

It was a gun.

Hanna’s gun!

‘Try to push the strap down.’

‘Which strap, dammit?’

‘There, that one! Strap, bar, whatever it is!’

Whatever it was , thought Amber, before the rover had been transformed into a pile of debris. A piece of the shaft? The mount from a radio receiver? She pushed against it with all her might while Rogachev pulled at the back of Chambers’ seat. A part of it had wedged itself between the backpack and her suit and was refusing to budge.

‘Hurry!’ shouted Julian.

Rogachev kicked against the backrest with his boot. It gave a little, but the real problem was the twisted bar. Amber looked up and saw the mining machine’s foot rising higher and higher, like something out of a nightmare.

‘Again, Oleg,’ she pleaded. ‘Kick it again.’

The foot was now hovering above their heads. Wheelbarrow-sized loads of dust and small stones hailed down on them. Rogachev cursed again in Russian, which Amber interpreted as a bad sign. She pushed herself against the strap once more, burrowing the tips of her boots into the ground, tensing her muscles, and suddenly the entire thing broke right through the middle. Rogachev grabbed it, pulled the released backrest out from under the backpack and hurled it away.

‘I’ll make it by myself from here!’

In a flash, Evelyn pulled herself out of the rubble and jumped up. They ran away just as the beetle’s leg was making its descent, throwing themselves onto the back seat of Julian’s rover. At the very moment when he drove away, the monstrous foot crashed down onto the wreck and crunched it with such force that their getaway car was jolted into the air for a second.

‘Where to now?’ called Julian.

Amber pointed into the dust. ‘The other side. They must be on the other side of the machine!’

What a discovery! Momoka bent over, clasped the unexpected instrument of her vengeance and went after Hanna, who had pulled himself to his feet and was staggering away like a drunkard. It had become significantly darker and a hazy shadow had descended on them, but Momoka paid no attention to it. She made a leap and kicked out at the Canadian, knocking him off his feet once again.

Hanna rolled onto his stomach.

No, don’t shoot yet, she told herself. She wanted him to be watching her as she did it. To look at her as he died! Breathless, she waited until he had rolled over, then pointed the weapon at his helmet.

‘You piece of shit!’

She pressed one of the buttons. Then another.

‘Do you see this? Do you see it, you piece of shit?’

Nothing. How did you shoot this thing? Oh, it must be here, a safety measure: the detonator was protected by a shield, so she just had to push it up with her thumb, and then—

Hanna crawled backwards, staring at the armoured, faceless figure in disbelief. It could only be her. He would have credited Rogachev with the same fighting spirit, but this person was small and petite, unmistakably Momoka Omura, and she was ready to make him pay for Warren Locatelli’s death. She had discovered the safety shield. She was pushing it up. He had no chance of grabbing the weapon in time. He had to get away, put distance between himself and the Japanese woman. Was she screaming at him? Momoka was locked on to a different frequency, but he was certain she was screaming at him, and suddenly he felt unfairly treated. I didn’t kill your husband, he wanted to say, as if that would have changed anything, but he hadn’t killed him, instead he had wanted to spare him and make his death less painful, and now he was going to be punished for that?