Europe, 2300 AD (more or less). A Marquesan scholar spontaneously begins developing the ability to act as the long-sought hyperdrive, a device--or in this case, a person--capable of reprogramming the space-time continuum and transporting people and objects across the galaxy at will. His abduction by agents of the city-state of Toulouse, who desire to put his abilities to work for them, prompts his boyfriend and childhood best friend to embark on a rescue mission: to Mars. The formerly barren planet has become the garden spot of the solar system, but the societies that flourish there are dramatically different from those that remain on Earth. And even as the would-be rescuers find themselves navigating the fierce local politics of the Martian outposts, they begin to realize that the hyperdrive is already at work.