When the governments of East and West united as the CoDominium and brought the world under one central control, they needed a dumping ground for trouble makers, from actual criminals to those whose only "crime" lay in not accepting the CoDominium's yoke with sufficient enthusiasm. The planet Haven was that dumping ground, and for centuries undesirables of all sorts were deposited on its inhospitable surface to survive however they could - or die. The strong survived both the harsh conditions and the attacks of their neighbors, in a world that had always been at war.

Then the war got much hotter. The genetically engineered Sauron supermen had almost defeated the Empire of Man, but the Empire had managed to destroy Sauron power in a last Pyrrhic spasm. Now the last surviving Saurons have fled to Haven. The Saurons have been genetically designed to think like battle computers and fight like demons, but they are facing a world whose population has been honed to deadly sharpness by centuries of highly unnatural selection; Sauron victory is by no means a foregone conclusion...