Steel World recap

Family debt drives James McGill from university into Legion Varus, where lethal training prepares him for a campaign on Cancri 9. A mine defense develops into a regulated contest against Saurian forces for control of Steel World. McGill kills Galactic inspector Xlur and is officially executed, but Graves secretly arranges his defective reconstruction. McGill and Carlos help seize a spaceport, and McGill later recovers stolen revival data that saves Graves, Natasha, and other soldiers from permanent loss. During the final siege, he proves that the Saurians repeatedly revive the same scarred jugger. The Nairbs first declare a Saurian victory by body count, then disqualify them for using pirated revival technology. Varus retains its contracts. McGill receives a healthy body, escapes a second permanent-execution order through Drusus's intervention, and returns to Earth with Carlos and Natasha. His survival after the Xlur affair remains a concealed danger for Earth.

James McGill leaves university after his family loses income and housing, then signs a six-year contract with Legion Varus. Fellow recruit Carlos Ortiz initially clashes with him, but James saves Carlos during a deliberately lethal training exercise aboard Corvus, creating a personal debt between them. Training continues with real deaths and reconstruction, and James earns the hostility of Veteran Harris by killing him during a live-fire drill. James, Carlos, Kivi, Natasha, and Harris are assigned to Adjunct Leeson's combat group for a deployment to Cancri 9. Their stated task is to defend a Saurian mining complex from rebellious workers. After a scattered landing, James survives an attack by native predators, while bio specialist Anne Grant is killed and Weaponeer Sargon takes command. At the fortified mine, the expected labor dispute escalates. James kills an unidentified armed six-limbed being in the jungle, then coordinated raptors and juggers overwhelm the skirmish line. Kivi dies from her wounds, and both James and Carlos are killed while withdrawing. Their deaths place them in the revival system, but the unknown alien presence and the enemy's organization remain unexplained.

James and Carlos are reconstructed after the jungle ambush and return to a battle in which Saurian forces breach the mine defenses with coordinated troops and advanced weapons. Tribune Drusus treats James's alien sighting as possible evidence that a rival mercenary power is threatening Earth's position on Cancri 9. A search produces no decisive proof, and the fighting moves underground. Graves's team discovers a concealed Saurian entry route, but an ambush kills Natasha and Harris. Graves sacrifices himself with a plasma grenade and leaves James commanding seven trapped survivors. James leads them through the enemy tunnel to the surface, where they find a hidden excavation, a deserted Saurian camp, and the wreckage of Legion Varus's withdrawal. The survivors shoot down an air car and injure its six-limbed occupant. He is identified as Inspector Xlur, a protected Galactic official and the same kind of being James previously killed. Primus Turov and Leeson judge that James has killed Xlur twice. In the inspector's presence, Harris carries out James's sentence of permanent death.

Anne Grant secretly reconstructs James from poor biological material, leaving him alive in a dangerously unstable body despite his official execution. Graves admits arranging the illicit revival because James's report enabled the legion to reconstruct Graves and Harris. He orders James to conceal both his survival and the incident involving Inspector Xlur. Graves also reveals that the mine contract concealed a larger territorial contest against the Saurians. Legion Varus returns to Cancri 9 and assaults a Galactic spaceport defended by armored Saurian regulars. Kivi is killed again, while Harris sends James and Carlos into the compound using a local air car. A Nairb prefect charges them with violating the prohibition on aircraft and temporarily disables human revival systems, but James invokes arbitration and gains a stay. After the gates open, James and Carlos exploit the Saurians' duty not to endanger neutral Nairbs, use a captured energy weapon, and break the defense from within. Varus takes the spaceport. Graves shields James during the debrief, though Nairb review remains pending. The legion prepares to garrison the captured site as the Saurians mobilize to retake it.

Light troops replace the heavy units at the captured spaceport, where the campaign is governed as a limited contest rather than a war of conquest. James's cohort installs an old revival unit in a hidden underground vault. During a Saurian artillery strike, attackers tunnel into the chamber, kill or incapacitate its staff, and steal the machine. The loss threatens permanent death for everyone whose only stored data remains inside it, including Graves, Natasha, and Anne Grant. James volunteers to pursue the thieves with Carlos and Sargon before Leeson seals the tunnel. They catch the Saurian team, but Sargon is killed and Carlos dies after saving James, repaying the debt created during training. James records their deaths and returns with the machine's front panel. Its data allows most of the lost personnel to be reconstructed. Centurion Thompson takes control of the salvage, detects signs of James's unauthorized defective body, and tries to recycle him while erasing what he knows. James escapes his restraints and kills Thompson with her own syringe. He leaves the medical bunker with both the covert revival and Thompson's death liable to expose him.

The Saurians attack the spaceport through underground drilling rigs and then launch repeated artillery, raptor, and jugger assaults. Legion Varus suffers hundreds of losses while its local revival capacity is gone, turning the campaign into a contest over actual bodies lost. Kivi and Weaponeer Lund die when Bunker 12 is overrun. At another bunker, James and Weaponeer Borges record a crimson jugger with a distinctive scar appearing in successive waves despite prior confirmed deaths. Borges loses an arm, blinds the attackers with his projector, and is killed, leaving James isolated after the defense collapses. James uses the projector to kill the scarred jugger again and presents the repeated bodies and suit images to arriving Nairb officials. They initially rule that the Saurians have won by several hundred bodies, but accept his grievance and investigate the revival evidence. Graves recalls James by directing an orbital missile onto him, allowing Anne Grant to reconstruct him aboard Corvus in a healthy body. The inquiry finds that the Saurians used pirated revival technology and disqualifies them, so Varus retains Steel World by forfeit. Drusus later overturns an internal permanent-execution order against James, accepts his self-defense claim in Thompson's death, and suppresses the Xlur affair. James returns to Earth with Carlos and Natasha while Varus seeks another contract, though future Galactic scrutiny remains a threat to humanity.

McGill's images and recovered bodies show that the Saurians repeatedly revived the same scarred jugger. Although the Nairbs initially award the battle to the Saurians on body count, their inquiry finds that the rival force used pirated revival technology. The violation disqualifies the Saurians, leaving Legion Varus in control of Steel World and its neighboring contracts. Graves has McGill killed by an orbital strike so he can be reconstructed aboard Corvus in a healthy, legitimate body. McGill is recommended for Weaponeer training and a silver Nova. Natasha is restored from the data he recovered, Carlos is alive, and all three return to Earth with the legion. Drusus overturns an internal order for McGill's permanent execution and accepts that he killed Thompson in self-defense. Varus suppresses both McGill's illicit earlier revival and the death of Inspector Xlur, but a later Galactic investigation could still make humanity collectively answer for the incident. The legion begins leave while negotiating its next contract.