The Procyon War began far from Earth, on a planet known as New Procyon in Sector Seven.
A planetary survey team from the Trans-Stellar Colonial Corporation of Earth had been sent to evaluate the world for human settlement and mining. The corporation had already spent trillions of credit units exploring the planet, and the survey team expected a substantial bonus if they cleared the way for development.
But Earth was not the only civilization with an interest in New Procyon.
An alien race of humanoids known as the Mesaarkans had already established a small settlement there and registered their claim with the United Galactic Federation. Their request was still moving through official channels, and the Mesaarkans had opened the planet for settlement before their claim had been formally approved.
That bureaucratic gray area became the spark that ignited a devastating war.
While exploring the planet, the Trans-Stellar team encountered several adolescent Mesaarkans hiking in the woods. Because the young Mesaarkans lived simply and off the grid, the survey team mistook them for pre-technological natives. If New Procyon was inhabited by an indigenous people, the Federation would deny Trans-Stellar’s permit to open a mining colony.
The survey team chose greed over truth.
Rather than report what they had found, the geologists—who were wholly unqualified to determine whether the Mesaarkans were indigenous people or alien colonists—decided to eliminate the evidence. They killed the young Mesaarkans and attempted to destroy every trace of the settlement.
But one Mesaarkan escaped.
The massacre had been recorded and transmitted to Mesaark. The killers were identified as Earthers, and the Mesaarkan response was swift and catastrophic. Their space armada destroyed the survey team on New Procyon, then moved against Earth and the human-populated worlds aligned with it.
The Trans-Stellar survey team had killed hundreds on New Procyon.
The Mesaarkans killed billions on Earth and on dozens of allied human worlds.
The Creation of the Cyborgs
Even before the attack on Earth, the Federation Interstellar Military Defense Force—commonly called Star Force—had been struggling with a shortage of recruits.
The political climate throughout the Federation was strongly opposed to military drafts. Many considered forced conscription a form of slavery. Desperate for soldiers but unwilling to openly draft civilians, Federation and military leaders turned to another solution.
They decided to manufacture an army.
These soldiers became known as cyborgs.
The cyborgs were genetically modified from human embryos created in vitro from donated human eggs and sperm. The embryos were grown in artificial wombs and injected with nanocybots that altered and strengthened their bodies. Their growth was accelerated, allowing them to emerge from the womb as fully adult soldiers in only five years.
Before birth, their brains were enhanced with microbioelectric internal computers, scanners, and an internal network that connected them to one another. While still in the artificial wombs, they received subliminal virtual training, preprogramming them for whatever type of combat role the military required.
They were conditioned to feel little or no compassion for enemies identified by their commanders. They were stronger, larger, faster, and harder to kill than ordinary humans, with steel-reinforced skeletons and cybernetic enhancements designed for war.
They were literally born to be soldiers.
The Cyborg Rights Ruling
For years, cyborgs served the Federation with deadly efficiency.
Then human rights groups discovered the truth: the cyborgs were not being paid for their military service, and they had been conscripted for life.
Federation and military officials attempted to classify them as artificial humans because they had been genetically modified and conceived in vitro rather than born naturally. But the Federation Council ruled that cyborgs were human.
The ruling changed everything.
The military could require cyborgs to serve a minimum of ten years to recoup the cost of their creation, but after that term, each cyborg had to be given a choice: continue serving with full pay and benefits, or leave the military.
For the first time, the cyborgs were recognized not as weapons, but as people.
The First Cyborg Facility
The first Cybernetic Enhanced Human Fabrication Corporation facility was hidden in a massive underground structure beneath a dairy farm south of Chicago, in the former United States.
Above ground, the dairy farm continued to operate for the first twenty years, concealing the truth beneath it. While cattle grazed and trucks came and went, thousands of cyborg soldiers were being created below the surface.
Those soldiers would go on to fight the Mesaarkans, defend human worlds, and eventually return to a devastated Earth, where survival, rebuilding, and love would shape the future of the Cyborg Universe.
Where the Stories Begin
The Procyon War shattered Earth, created the cyborg soldiers, and left scars that would last for generations. But the war also created unexpected bonds.
Cyborg warriors returned to Earth to rebuild what had been lost. Human survivors fought to reclaim their homes. And some Mesaarkans, horrified by the cruelty of their own empire, deserted and chose a different path. The story begins in the free prequel Cyborg Awakenings.
Their stories continue in the connected worlds of the Cyborg Universe and Alien Deserters romances.