I've done fantasy action and action horror in a sci-fi setting, but never straight up sci-fi. Last night I tried it. I wrote 10 pages, and I think that it might interest you too.
In order to make it sci-fi, I had to come up with futuristic elements, but not star trekish. The only way to show off sci-fi is the vehicles, otherwise its just a bunch of humans and humanoids hanging out. I don't know about starship travel, cause I haven't watched enough Star Trek.
So I thought, racing. Get 20 something vehicles on tracks on a variety of fictional planets. Vehicle drama isn't good enough though, so the racing is the backdrop.
I have never seen Fast and the Furious, Speed Racer or Taladega Nights, so if this is like any of these movies; trust me, I did not copy them.
Here's the story:
On a fictional planet, an "agent" (good fella, not your mysterious agent) is sent into an alien corporation to get an information cube from a database, then release a virus.
He gets a voice transmission, the "office" is sending what cube he needs. They send it to his watch. E-9
He does so, angry security ensues. He hops into is Black Mamba (futuristic racecar) and makes his daring escape with other futuristic racecars following him. A chase scene on futuristic neon streets. On another planet, no one can survive outside of the cars, buildings or compound like cities.
In the back seat, he discovers his girlfriend's little sister in the back seat. A butch little girl that heard all of the agent's adventure traveling between planets as a race pilot and wanted to tag along.
The hero finds the next city, (a compound like a giant hotel that can house millions of people). There has to be a space station like element.
In the parking garage, the security aliens catch up to him, but in the city, the guns and weapons of the aliens are magnetized to the ceilings.
City police appear to stop the bare fisted killing. The agent is safe for a night.
In his city room he contacts his girlfriend via visual communication. He has her little sister and he has a little business to attend to, but he will have her back in two days. He has a race to compete in on another planet.
He gets off the com with her, tucks in the sister, then contacts his boss, another woman. He has the information cube. What's on it? That's not for him to know. She will send another agent to pick up the cube before the race.
The little sister wakes up and wonders who that girl is? He cuts communication to hide the other woman. Tells her go to sleep, static overcomes the communication monitor.
He cannot communicate with anyone. Goes outside the room, everyone is having the same trouble. He comes back inside, the president of the alien corporation is on the com, he wants his cube back. The owner knows where to get it too. There is a race tomorrow and the president knows how deadly it is to be a race pilot, most do not survive two seasonal circuits.
At the race the next day on yet a different fictional planet, there is no life, just baron red desert and a single track. There are antigravity plates to make the futuristic racecars jump, magnetic bars to draw them into the barriers.
The tracking device in the cube points to the agent's Black Mamba racer. The agent has it on him to keep it safe. The agent waits for the man to pickup the cube.
Meanwhile, the man making the pickup is detained by security. They throw him in a room and the alien security enters and they are seen killing him with their bare hands and claws.
Afterward, one of the alien pushes a button and is encased in a hologram that matches the look of the pickup man. The agent waits the pickup man, but he never comes.
The president of the coorporation discusses with a shady racer of his own alien race to be rough on the agent with his cube. Do it for the good of their alien race, and because there is plenty of money for the agent's racer to be destroyed. The cube can be recovered from a flaming wreckage.
The alien racer agrees. On the track, it is a big elaborate deathtrap for 22 racers and five laps. Television cameras show the event across the universe where it makes billions of dollars and billions of watchers on everywhere but Earth that could care less.
After escaping death in numerous ways. The girlfriend's little sister watches from the crowd as the alien racer fails to kill the agent, but succeeds at coming in first place.
The race ends, and the agent steps out into the garage and finds the pickup man. He gives the cube away to the pickup man, before he gets a call from the office.
The pickup man is dead, his watch that monitors vital signs has reported him as dead for the past hour. The agent runs to get the cube back from the rogue pickup man.
The aliens appear and block him off. They have his girlfriend's sister with them. They will tear her in two if he doesn't give them the cube. The cube that he just gave away to the rogue.
What the agent doesn't know is the aliens he deals with do not have any hologram technology. A new alien race has that technology, along with the cube and what is in it.
Discord
Light Style