Synopsis: From the back cover of the DAW Books first edition: The final confrontation - Branded a traitor, Jack Storm, the last true Dominion Knight, has returned to Malthen as a virtual prisoner of Emperor Pepys to carry out a mission no one else could even attempt - to find and rescue St. Colin from the dreaded Ash-farel. In the company of Bogie, the mysterious sentience inhabiting Jack's battle armor, St. Colin had departed from Ash-farel territory, seeking a face-to-face meeting with these aliens who were devastating both the Thrakian League and the human-populated worlds. But St. Colin's sudden disappearance became the catalyst for a crisis that threatened to explode into a full-fledged rebellion against the emperor. And so Jack had been lured back with the promise of regaining his forgotten past - the life memories stolen from him during years lost in cold sleep. For Pepys had Jack's missing mind tape and was offering him the chance of being reprogrammed. Yet would the price prove too high? Reprogramming might give him back his remembrances of times long gone while robbing him of the present. And if he could no longer tell friend from foe, Jack might unwittingly become the tool of the very forces he'd been fighting to overcome...