The Arithmetic of Echoes

Velda Adogan went missing. Twice. 

Her family are scouring the galaxy for her, unaware that she has stumbled into a genocidal conspiracy.Her nemesis Neve Kinop is not one man, but two. The Gelvan twins Reymon and Baylek, survivors of a race the Engus empire all but exterminated. They stole the M-drive, built it into a secret fleet, and plan to settle a score with it.

But every jump the M-drive makes leaves an echo in the dark. Most are too small to matter. One was not.

Five thousand years ago an alien civilisation hid itself behind a fence of silence, wary of an ancient menace. Now a clandestine M-drive jump to another galaxy has made an echo loud enough to be noticed by the thing that the aliens fear most.

Exiled agent Danpah carries the aliens' urgent message for humanity: "stop the M-drive jumps". But the government has no idea the drive was ever stolen, or where to look for the thieves. It's a problem they need to solve quickly, before something terrifying solves it for them.

Hard science fiction with the pace of an espionage thriller, for readers of Alastair Reynolds. Book two of The Gelvan Saga, but it stands alone.

(430 pages approx.)