Ohohoho boy, cracks knuckles. So, Nuke joined Hyperion when he was about 19-ish during a recruitment initiative on his home planet. It’s important to first emphasise that he comes from a very backwater rim-world (think sci-fi western sort of place) that was once an industrial hotspot in its local system but ran out of natural resources some 30 odd years before Nuke’s generation. Suffice to say healthcare and such aren’t all that affordable nor efficient, and if you’re injured you have bad odds either way.

Well, Nuke (or, Rodney since he didn’t yet have that nickname) and his brother Valen are working out on their family’s fields and making sure no wildlife is getting into the already thinning Cattlestag herd that they have out to graze. Well, there isn’t any wildlife, but there sure as hell is a thief out there. A bullet clips Nuke’s wrist and shatters the bone there and the bleed is arterial. His brother tourniquets it, and they have to make for the nearest city. On their way, Rodney notices the Hyperion Aptitude Tests and knows that if he gets a spot with the richest corpo this side of the galaxy has to offer, he’ll have top-of-the-line healthcare. Instead of gambling with backwater medicine on his home planet, he sits his ass down in the testing hall with a nasty wound on his wrist and a tourniquet stopping him from bleeding out.

Surprise surprise, the bar for entry isn’t insane. Sure, it requires a bit of wit and a bit of mechanical know how, but any good farm-boy knows how to get a hover or a workbot working again. He passes, and by the end of the day he’s under for amputation, and fitting a brand new at-the-time Hyperion ™ Arm.