Nathan is son of Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean Grey, and Scott Summers, and showed mutants powers of telepathy and telekinetics still being a baby. He got caught by Mr. Sinister, who is quite fond on Summers' genes, and them by a demon obeying the Goblin Queen, Madelyne, who planned to kill the baby after being abandoned by Scott when Jean appeared.

The child was rescued, but he fell victim to a techno-organic virus, and the only way to save him was to gave him to a strange woman who said to come from the future and to belong to the clan Askani. This clan had been founded by Rachel, who would lost in time later, just in time to save his little brother's life.

Scott agreed to gave his son to the stranger and they disappeared, building a clone for the kid just in case they couldn't mend his body, but Apocalypse, lord of the world by that time, broke in trying to get him. Ray's last maneuver was to bring the essences of their parents, who were spending their honeymoon in the beach, to that future and placing them into other bodies. As soon as they raised Nate, they would be back in the same instant they left (funny thing, each time Scott marries, he goes to a tropical beach and gets kidnapped. Maybe he should try the mountain). They decided not to tell Nate who they really were and adopted the identities of Redd and Slym (old Jean's and Scott's nicknames). Cable anyway, has recognized them recently.

The bad thing about all that is that Nate never got his new body, so he has to fight constantly the infection and has replaced some damaged parts of himself by steel, looking like a cyborg. Even worse, since the new body was there, Apocalypse got him and raised him as Stryfe, who developed the Legacy Virus as a gift to mutantkind. He has fought Nathan many times.

After growing up, Nate headed his clan in a fight against Apocalypse, losing his wife and foster son (well, Tyler didn't really die, but got very, very angry with his father and decided to take a walk to the present - it must be a custom in that siecle -. Guess who he is?)

Nate inherited parts of the space ship X Factor and called it Graymalkin. Using it, he traveled many times to present - as I said, a custom -, joining a band of mercenaries and meeting Domino, his former lover. During a confrontation against Dyscordia, he left them buried and waiting for a bomb to explode, and, gee, they didn't love that too much, so those who still were able to, vowed vengeance against him.

Later, Nate went again to the present, looking for a boy who was to be one of the Externals, Samuel Guthrie. Cannonball was still with the remains of the New Mutants and Cable headed them and turned them into a military group of attack : X Force

Cable has the following powers: Telepathy, telekinetics, superstrengh (due to his cybernetic part), knowledge of all kind of weapons, some body weapons integrated in his metal part, and all typical military abilities as well as leadership

The worst thing about him is his very bad attitude, who grants him the dislikeness of the major part of the Xavier dream's followers. For him, life is a war and the survivors must be soldiers ready to the fight. (I guess he saw Rambo too many times, but hey, this is the essence of the character!)