When Queen Tassin Alrade of Arlin is forced to flee her kingdom on the post-holocaust planet of Omega Five, she has no idea that the strange warrior who helps her is a cyborg. Her world has forgotten the technology that almost destroyed it, and its society has regressed to a feudal age. Unless she escapes the kings who pursue her, one will annex her land through marriage, by right of capture. The cyber-bio combat unit is the deadliest hi-tech killing machine ever created. He is a genetically enhanced clone trained in every art of combat, able to use any weapon, speak every language and operate any craft, and his metal-plated bones and internal body armour make him virtually indestructible. He is so dangerous, in fact, that he is controlled by an AI that can never achieve self-awareness. Then, a freak accident damages the micro-supercomputer that controls Sabre, and he becomes what his creators have always dreaded the most: a free man. His lack of courtly manners annoys Tassin, while he finds the spoilt young queen a trial, and her high-handed ways too often land her, and, by association, Sabre, in trouble. He has no experience of the world, but now he must take charge of his destiny.