Following the events in the Achilles Battle Fleet, in which Mei Ling Lee is court-martialed and demoted in rank, she transfers to the Alliance Marine Corps and is sent to the far reaches of the galaxy to fight criminal gangs engaged in human trafficking. Lee is abruptly pulled out of company command and sent on a top-secret undercover mission to find and arrest her former boss, Admiral Jay Chambers, who has been missing for the past two years. Alliance intelligence suspects Chambers of running a criminal empire on a remote planet. When Lee finds him, she realizes she must join forces with him to employ her wits and her martial arts skill to foil a plot by terrorists to use time travel to disrupt the present and the future.

Former US Army Ranger and Tae Kwon Do grandmaster Brendan Wilson draws upon his military and martial arts experience, as well as his love of science to continue the saga of Mei Ling Lee in this second novel in the series.