Dying from poison and dependent on an illegal drug to stay alive, a fired cop must overthrow the universal syndicate that supplies him to find the rare antidote that will save him, but the syndicate’s sadistic overlord sparks a galactic conflict to stop him. 

SYNOPSIS:

FOLD DRIVE: A two-kilometer diameter spherical space vessel that houses an engine capable of folding space to instantly travel vast cosmic distances.

Spere of Influence: the radius extending from a Fold Drive ship wherein any vessel travels along with the Fold Drive during jumps. The means by which other, sub-light only capable spaceships travel through vast distances of space.

Powder Blue: An illegal drug, usually in powder form. That causes hallucinations and heightens the user’s senses and reflexes but instills a strong sense of anger and paranoia.

The leader of a universal crime syndicate, The Catacombs, KEN DEACON engages an alien fortune teller to peek into his future. She tells him that an old foe will rise and challenge his grand plans and that if they are to succeed, the status quo must be altered, and foe must be dealt with. When asked who this old foe is, the fortune teller states that it is someone who lives with a deadly poison.

On board the Casino Ship ‘Calurone’, former cop ELI WEBB, an expert at reading body language, plays poker in a private room with several other players. He snorts the illegal drug, Powder Blue as he plays. Eli does not use the drug for its psychedelic high, or the enhanced senses it brings, he must keep using the drug because years ago, when he was still a cop, he was inflicted with a poison that persists in his body permanently and Powder Blue staves off death from that.

As a news feed in the room fills us in about a troubling, often violent dock worker’s strike, Eli’s assistant, SANDI CHERNOVSKI escorts three clients into the room. Eli gives the clients a hard to get, and illegal apparatus they contracted him to acquire. As the game progresses, Eli manoeuvres three players to go all in as he discusses the possible uses for the part he gave the clients. The players do not have enough on the table to cover the bet and they each promise alternatives to money.

Eli gets one player, Corporate Exec. URIEL McSORLEY to promise to pay a charity the equivalent of the pot if he loses. A second player promises to reveal who the assassins are who have come to kill Eli. The third player tells Eli that if he loses, he will tell Eli where to find a cure for the poison that has ruined his life.

As the hand plays out, Eli guesses the nature of the part he gave the clients correctly: It is going to used to sabotage a FOLD DRIVE, one of the vessels specially build to transport starships within its sphere of influence vast distances to other points in space.

One of the clients, HOPE CAMANETTI leaves the room as Eli wins the hand. The other two attack the players. Eli and Sandi defeat the assassins, but the player with the secret to Eli’s salvation lays dying. As he dies, he tells Eli where to find the cure.

Eli arrives at his cabin birth to find DANA ALBION waiting for him. She confronts Eli, demanding that she stay out of her life. She never needed or wanted Eli to look out for her since her husband, Eli’s old partner died. Eli should feel guilty, since he was the one who caused his death but sending her money all the time will not allay his guilt. She has moved on; found a new man she is to marry and is pregnant with that man’s child.

Eli sends Sandi with his electronic, universal identification on a secret mission to distract his enemies. He has to wait three days for the next schedule Fold Jump to the system where he might find his cure. In the meantime, uses the time to visit a contact and hunt Camanetti who took the part he provided. His contact, THOMSON MACHEANEY lends him an ID Flash Phaser to get past facial recognition software.

Sandi takes a Fold Drive jump to a solar system that is the home base for a Mercenary Company to engage their services. Deacon sends one of his lieutenants, QUINN to oversee Catacomb operations concerning the Fold Drive.

Eli makes sure Dana gets aboard the ship she booked passage on, the Luxury Cruise Ship, Sun Prince. The Sun Prince leaves port and steers for its designated Fold Drive.

Eli gets close the rooting out Camanetti, but as he gets close, Camanetti and her cohorts create chaos by killing and wounding innocent bystanders using the strike as a cover. Camanetti gets away in the mess. Corporate police detain Eli, stopping him from pursuing her.

After the police question and release Eli, he rushes to catch a ship to get to the Fold Drive for the jump he needs. He stows away on board just as the ship takes off. The ship has to hurry to make it into the Fold Drive’s sphere of influence or be left out of the jump. It is the same Fold Drive the Sun Prince carrying Dana steered toward. Ship’s security finds Eli and confiscates his stash of Powder Blue.

Suffering from the poison taking affect from not being subdued by Powder Blue, Eli escapes custody when guards come in to conduct a cavity search. His stash destroyed; he searches the ship until he reads the body language of someone who is probably dealing drugs. He corners the individual and takes his supply of Powder Blue but leaves him with the other drugs he carries.

Sandi’s meetings with the mercenaries prove fruitless, she and Eli do not have enough funds to engage their services. She travels round with Eli’s ID ensuring a trail to follow. She visits the player who promised to give, Eli’s winnings to a charity.

One of the players from the poker game informs Deacon that Eli hunts for the cure to the poison. No longer satisfied with ruining Eli’s life, Deacon concludes that he must die before his grand plans are put in jeopardy. He sends a brute of a man, “MONOLITH” to stop him and orders the Doctor who invented the poison moved.

Eli reprograms a set of messenger bots to distract security, then he steals a shuttle to search the rings of gas giant for the hidden Catacomb’s base where the cure is supposed to be. First he must dodge system police cruiser ships that chase him.

As they approach the rings, pirate vessels launch to intercept the police. Police and pirates battle while Eli sneaks away and uses the pirate’s trajectory to locate the hidden base. He infiltrates the base and discovers the base is only a manufacturing facility to cook and package Powder Blue. The Catacombs ceased using the facility for research years earlier. The Doctor he seeks moved on long ago.

On a subspace conference call with heads of Catacomb operations in different systems, Deacon orders that everywhere Eli goes and whoever helps him be killed or destroyed. Soon after Catacomb members show up everywhere Sandi when and used Eli’s ID. Many innocent people are tortured, even killed as they try to find Eli.

Eli wrests information from a Powder Blue chemist on the base as to the whereabouts of the Doctor: He had been taken by a man named ISAIAS VEASY, a high-level hitman for the Catacombs. With a sinking feeling of defeat, Eli sends a subspace message to his Police contact, BARAK SINGLETARY, asking him to track any known sightings of Veasy.

Eli takes his stolen shuttle and bluffs his way back onto another ship, the Sun Prince. Another ship, just arrived with a second fold drive sends a shuttle with “passengers” for the Sun Prince, but they are all Catacombs’ employees, among them Ramses “Monolith” Hallgarten. Monolith and Eli engage in an epic fight throughout the ship, damaging it extensively.

During the fight, Eli spots the woman to whom he gave the part to sabotage a fold drive board a supply shuttle for one of the Fold Drives with a group disguised as dock work strikers. He is too late to stop them. He triggers the abandon ship alarm to get all the passengers off as he takes control of the Sun Prince back from the Catacombs and steers it toward the same Fold Drive.

The strikers take over the Fold Drive and initiate a jump. Eli’s ship races to enter the Fold Drive’s sphere of influence, but only partially enters before the jump. As the Sun Prince races for the Fold Drive’s sphere of influence, he discovers that Dana is still on board. They make it to the edge of the event horizon sphere but as the Fold Drive makes its jump, cuts the Sun Prince in half.

The Fold Drive takes the remnants of the Sun Prince and more than a dozen other civilian ships to a remote part of space where dozens of Catacombs controlled pirate ships wait for them. Eli believes the Fold Drive must have malfunctioned, but as the pirate ships attack and board the other starships, he realizes this was the plan all along and the part he supplied made this happen.

His damaged ship drifts toward the Fold Drive but will explode before it gets close. Monolith has him cut off from any of the escape pods and his borrowed shuttle. Eli must either die in the explosion or risk his and Dana’s lives on a long-distance space walk to reach the Fold Drive.

A subspace call between Sandi, Uriel and the mercenaries. Using Eli’s winnings, Uriel fronts the rest of the money to hire the mercenaries.

Eli and Dana make it to the Fold Drive but must find a way inside. When they do they find that the strikers have been locked out of the Command-and-Control Center for the vessel and that the Catacombs have taken it over. Monolith followed Eli and Sandi there and renews his attacks.

During the struggle, the Catacombs members release a modified form of OSMODIUM TRITOSARIN gas throughout the Fold Drive accept the bridge. The strong, poisonous nerve agent kills all who breath it.

Eli survives by finding emergency Environmental Suits. He saves Dana, a few to the crew and some strikers by getting them into more suits or using up the last of his Powder Blue to stave off the effects of the poison. Monolith knew about the plan and was prepared for the gas. He captures Eli and the rest. As Monolith spaces those Eli saved, suits and all, other members of the Catacombs take Eli to another ship and imprison him.

The Doctor Eli had been searching for visits him. Dr. PIEMONTE COLLINS informs Eli that he is only alive so he can conduct experiments on him. The Doctor invented Osmodium Tritosarin and wonders how Powder Blue can keep someone alive after exposure to the extremely toxic nerve agent. Eli tricks Collins into revealing that there is an antitoxin for Osmodium Tritosarin.

Guards take him, suffering from lack of Powder Blue to Deacon who is on the same ship. Deacon and Eli engage in an intense, highly emotional discourse about their shared past and the Catacombs’ plans for the Fold Drive. As Eli fades, Dr. Collins insists that he be allowed to administer Powder Blue to keep Eli alive for study. The Doctor injects him, and Deacon sends Eli back to his cell.

On the way Eli escapes long enough to send a subspace message to Sandi with his location. Using a corporate owned Fold Drive, Sandi arrives with the mercenaries. An all-out space battle develops between the mercenaries and the Catacombs’ pirates.

As the space battle rages, Sandi and a boarding party assaults Deacon’s ship. Deacon, forced by Monolith, escapes in a shuttle to the Fold Drive. Eli uses the chaos to escape his cell. He saves Sandi as Monolith and Catacomb soldiers kill the last of the mercenary boarding party. Wounded, Sandi preps a shuttle while Eli defends her.

The fight transitions onto the shuttle where Monolith and Eli square off alone. After an intense struggle, Eli wins and kills Monolith. The space battle still rages as Sandi pilots the shuttle to the Fold Drive. She hacks docking codes to get them on board.

Eli uses extra canisters of Osmodium Tritosarin to wipe out most of the Catacombs soldiers and pirates. Dr. Collins injects those at Command-and-Control with the antitoxin for the gas. Eli leaves Sandi at a communications substation to guide some of the mercenaries engaged in the space battle to the Fold Drive and to summon more help.

After a violent conflict, Eli arrives at Command-and-Control. Deacon Waits for him there with a dreadful surprise. He shows Eli monitors with images of Sandi and Dana. Quinn holds Sandi at gunpoint while Catacomb members strap her onto a table with a bomb under it. They set a timer and leave her there. Another monitor shows Dana locked in a small room with a canister of Osmodium Tritosarin slowly leaking its deadly fumes.

Deacon quickly offers Eli a choice; Eli can save one of them, giving Deacon time to escape, or let them both die and face Deacon now. A bag of Powder Blue sits on a table close to Eli. He can use it to save Dana, but she will be in the same life-long dependence on the drug to keep her alive. Torn but with no time to debate with himself, Eli makes a heart-wrenching decision and races to save Sandi.

Quinn and Veasy intercept Eli’s race to save Sandi. The fight delays him, and when Eli defeats them and reaches the door the room that holds Sandi, the bomb goes off. He speeds to a terminal and calls up the monitor viewing the room with Dana. She lays dead on the floor.

The space battle outside all but finished, the mercenaries mop up the remaining pirates. Eli catches up with Deacon and they fight it out. Eli driven by anger and loss overcomes Deacon, drags him to an airlock and spaces him.

During the fight, Deacon kills Dr. Collins to ensure Eli never gets the cure. The Doctor’s body language let Eli know earlier that the Doctor had a hidden stash of the antitoxin on his body. Dying, Eli finds it and injects himself just before he passes out.

A Fold Drive arrives with intergalactic police vessels, sent by Uriel on the corporation’s dime. Eli and the mercenaries return the stolen Fold Drive to its proper place and ownership. Eli begins his new life and career as an Intergalactic Police Detective.