As penance for not being honest with his Admiral, Captain Tanner Scott has been sent on a boring routine maintenance mission of checking the RIM boundary buoys one after another and that lets him enjoy his Scotch in peace. Imagine his surprise when a Sleeper ship suddenly arrives on the RIM and he learns that the thousands of alien Sleepers are all children! While making that known has already gotten RIM Confederacy realms fighting, the real hidden problem is the secret that a virus infects the alien Sleepers. Finding out the Sleeper’s secret is one thing but the news of what that virus could bring to the RIM and what it might do is the real reason that a powerful RIM Royal realm wants to enslave the alien Sleepers. When Captain Scott realizes that another RIM planetary realm has also learned what the virus could be worth, they too try to take over the Sleeper ship and that means that Tanner can’t as per usual self-medicate with Scotch but instead has to overcome the RIM’s adversaries and somehow save the alien Sleepers too!