Ragnarok (The Echo Case Files)



  Ragnarok

  The Echo Case Files

  Copyright 2013 C.S. Stinton

  Cover by Lisa Falzon (https://www.lisa-falzon.com)

  Graphic Design by Double Marvellous (https://www.doublemarvellous.com)

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  For Dan and Alex,

  Without whom there’d have been no rabbit hole to fall down,

  And thus no story

  Acknowledgements

  I could not thank those who have helped with all my writing, let alone the writing of this book, without starting with Mike Kilburn. To him go the first ideas and the last ideas, the long hours spent chewing over plot points, the unravelling of knotty problems, and the reassurance that this is all worth pursuing. That, and reassurance that using a fast food finder app at the height of a tense climax is not, in fact, too stupid for publication.

  To Lucie Elliott I owe thanks for editing, for support, and for the many long hours we spent together writing our respective pieces, breaking the silence only to ask for advice on a name or line of dialogue completely without context. I’m sure no ill will come of this. I also owe her thanks, in a very real way, for my sanity over the year in which I wrote this book.

  Many thanks are owed to Mew for her advice on medical matters; for all the journals she pored through, for all the thoughts about spinal injuries and space-age medicine, and for affirming that my initial Google Fu when it comes to research isn’t actually all that bad.

  This book could not have been written without the many people I wrote and worked with at the Futility’s End project. This story’s come a long, long way from that trip we embarked upon ten years ago, but if anything is the primordial ooze from which it slithered, it’s FE.

  It’s cheesy, but I do need to thank my family – my parents for always being calmly and practically supportive of this venture, with level-headed advice when I needed a dose of reality, rather than how to fix this imaginary problem in an imaginary world. And it would be utterly remiss of me to not thank my brother – I may have surpassed him in geek power, but I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t exposed me to Science Fiction in the first place.

  Last, and most of all, thanks are due to Luke. Not just for putting up with me over the years, keeping me fed and watered when I’ve been in the depths of my writing, and all the emotional support that has been given along the way, though this has been immeasurably important. But above all others, when there has been a problem in world-building, in technology, in development of higher concepts, he’s the one who gives me a funny look and produces the most astonishingly useful answers without needing to even think. Many help me with my ideas, and he not only helps me with their development, but in ensuring I make it to the end of the road as well.

  And I know and love that they will all be there with me at the start of the next road.