All That Glitters is not Chrome

Legion Sketchbook

The Savage Wars showed the true horrors of a cyber connected world on the battlefield. For the Savage Marines—little more than an encased brain in a battle suit—everything was cybernetically connected. But it was in those long years between when the light huggers left Earth as people, and when they as the Savage Fleets, that the Uplifted, the Savages shored up the weaknesses in their own augmentation, while obliterating everyone else’s.

The Republic, previously known as the United Worlds Coalition, discovered and disrupted enemy networks after repeatedly battling the Savage Fleets. Like most tech at the time, very little was programmed by wire, so a constant stream of broadcast instructions altering tactics and technology was like an open invitation for Coalition experts to find and exploit.

Men like Makaffi—whom the savages called the Dirty Wizard—had found weaknesses in the tech and could exploit it. It was in these engagements and many like it playing out over a millennium, where the Savages took these very attacks and used them against their enemies.

Those with cybernetic eyes could have them hacked, allowing Savage intel specialists to gain instant entry to everything the target could see. The same went for cybernetic hearing augments, allowing the Uplifted to hear the whispers and secrets being stacked against them.

On the battlefield, soldiers given a second chance at the fight through artificial limbs, wound up crawling on dead legs or dragging useless rifles on straps beside deactivated arms. Savage directed EMP weapons were just as brutal on soldiers with cyber as the Coalition was. The United World’s soldiers were the pinnacle of combat one minute, and lifeless husks the next.

After the last shots of the Savage Wars had been fired, the legion adopted a policy of no cyber in its ranks. This ruling had many a soldier wondering if their careers in the legion were over after severe injuries. We see this play out in Stryker’s War, when SGT Lankin is attacked by a local animal whose venom kept the leej’s hand from responding to treatment. His long time ally and friend cautions him about cybernetics as it’s always a one way ticket out of the legion.

Frequently, we see the legion snub the use of cybernetics because of their vulnerability to being hacked or deactivated. Despite the feelings of the legion, someone with cyber can still be dangerous. Chasing untold numbers of vile criminals on the edge, Tyrus Rechs had faced his fair share of cyber. In some cases, the wanted bounty hunter narrowly escaped being gutted by inborn weaponry.

Find the fight by wire in books like The Hundred, Stryker’s War, and the upcoming Tryus Rechs: Escape from Red Eye.