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Super Soldier / Literature

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Super Soldiers in literature.

  • The Acacia series features several in a fantasy setting. The Mein are a warlike tribe from the grim north that had been subjugated centuries ago by the Acacia empire when the Acacian king used words stolen from Elenet to curse their violent forebears with undeath and exile them into a limbo dimension. However, undeath had the benign side-effect of giving these ancient veteran warriors, now known as the Tunishnevre, Super-Strength and Nigh-Invulnerability. After the Mein usurped the Akaran Dynasty, they intended to ritually sacrifice the royal children to release the Tunishnevre to conquer the world. Helping the Mein were the army of the Numrek, who are exiles of a near-immortal, gigantic and super-strong race who, during the course of their long lives, have developed potent incendiary/alchemical weapons to use when they're not simply bashing their enemies to death. Finally, there are the Santoth, the wizard-warriors used by the first Acacian king to forge the Acacia empire — twisted into immortal forms and taught only black magic derived from the words of Elenet, the Santoth were cursed by the Acacian king to be in constant agony unless they were using foul sorcery on enemies.
  • After the Revolution: During the Second American Civil War, the federal government created Cyborg super-soldiers, implanting them with enough chrome to make a single such 'god-soldier' more than a match for a squad of Powered Armored troopers or a full rifle platoon of baseline humans. The majority of the god-tier cyborgs went rogue during the War and aligned themselves with one or more of the dissident factors (or simply abandoned the conflict wholesale) as their newly acquired powers (and new mentality thanks to their implants) made them effectively uncontrollable by the army. Roland, one of the main characters, is one such cyborg and ends up pummeling a hit squad of 'regular' cyborgs with an infantry support weapon into submission with his own severed arm in less than thirty seconds, all while missing his gun and heavily tripping on acid.
  • Alien in a Small Town: The Tesks (short for "grotesque") were genetically engineered as soldiers, but they ultimately rebelled against the government that made them, ending the war they'd been made for. Their descendants have had a hard time trying to be accepted in mainstream human society in the years since, however.
  • Alterien:
    • Oberon is enhanced to such a degree he is able to serve in an elite group of superhuman soldiers.
    • Apart from the Alteriens are enhanced soldiers such as the SABERs and their British counterparts, the Actuals.
    • There are other superhuman soldiers from other countries such as the Red Hammers from Russia.
    • New experimental super soldiers were eventually produced that proved to be a challenge even to the Alteriens. These included the Kinetic Absorbing Endoskeleton cyborgs (the Kendos) and the Double Ms (matter manipulators).
  • In the Blackcollar trilogy, the Blackcollars are deliberately low-tech supersoldiers, created using drugs to enhance speed and strength, then equipped with low profile body armor and weapons like shuriken, nunchaku, and slingshots, in order to wage a guerrilla war against an enemy capable of tracking more advanced weapons. This was a part of a two-pronged strategy for combatting an enemy with superior numbers: the Blackcollar use guerilla tactics on occupied planets, while Nova-class cruisers are individually superior to anything the enemy has.
  • Black Man has the Thirteens, genetic throwbacks to early hunter-gatherers who were forced out of the breeding pool by the rise of agriculture. Several nations had programs that birthed and trained them, particularly the U.S.'s Project Lawman and the U.K.'s Project Osprey, but these were dismantled by the Jacobsen Accords.
  • The Brightest Shadow: The Catai are mansthein who have undergone an unnatural rebirth that makes them far larger and stronger, plus makes their skin impervious to ordinary weapons.
  • The title characters of The Cobra Trilogy are man-made supersoldiers originally created for a major war. They have unbreakable bones and numerous weapons built into their bodies. At the end of the first book (Well after the war ended), it is revealed that the process that made their bones unbreakable also caused people who underwent the COBRA treatment to become arthritic and anemic as they got older. This is in addition to the question brought up earlier in the book of what you're supposed to do with supersoldiers when there isn't a war going on.
  • The Conquerors Trilogy: The Copperheads are cybernetically augmented humans capable of "Mindlink" with their fighter craft, to the extent where the highest level makes the pilot feel like they are the ship, and allowing the equivalent of instant telepathic communication among a squadron. For obvious reasons, they're incredibly effective in combat. Unfortunately, because the Mindlink is both highly stimulating and designed to suppress things like physical and emotional pain while it's active, it can become addictive and even cause brain damage if it's used more than absolutely necessary.
  • In Council Wars, the Elves are the virtually immortal genetically engineered superhuman soldiers of the last Resource Wars.
  • Pepper from Crystal Rain. His nanotech-enhanced body actually burns off a good fifty pounds over the course of a single fight, and he has to keep eating and drinking constantly during lulls in the battle to keep his metabolism running. So badass that he actually came out of a And I Must Scream situation more or less unscathed.
  • Cyborg by Martin Caidin is about a test pilot who is nearly killed in a terrifying crash, then repaired with bionic limbs that transform him into a super soldier. It was later adapted for television as The Six Million Dollar Man.
  • In the Death's Head series, the Death's Head are the most elite special ops for the Octavian Empire. They're not super-soldiers, but one particular officer in the Death's Head, Sven Tveskoeg, is. He's a 7-foot-tall, well-muscled, brutal man who's even more skilled than he is strong. Besides having a pain threshold that's off the charts, Sven uniquely can recover from any injury short of dismemberment (he has a bionic arm). He once recovered from being disemboweled by simply stuffing his guts back in. He's also hidden items by cutting himself putting the item into the wound and letting it seal, later cutting it out again. No one knows why he regenerates; genetically, he's 90% human. Later in the series, the remaining 10% is discovered to be Old World human.
  • The Discworld version of Orcs. They have extendable claws in their fingers, are superhumanly strong, can recover from lethal wounds, and created by the Igors for the Evil Empire from humans. They were used as cannon fodder in Zerg Rush tactics, and were considered to be both Always Chaotic Evil (though as is pointed out, they needed... encouragement. Not many creatures will charge a pike emplacement by choice) and Stupid Evil. The one we meet is a Warrior Poet. It's implied that there was a discrepancy between the people who ordered orcs made (who expected super-strong cannon fodder to throw en masse at the enemy, and as such used them like that) and the Igors who made them (who heard super-soldiers and made super-soldiers — in every respect, including extremely quick learning and a grasp of tactics and strategy so strong it bleeds over into other aspects of intelligence).
  • In Jack Vance's The Dragon Masters novella, humans on another planet had been knocked back into the black powder stage of development by an alien reptilian race known as the Greph. Generations ago, humans lucked out and captured some greph raiders — humans then bred their captives and raised a Slave Race known as the dragons. Some breeds of dragons are raised specifically for combat, such as the super-strong Juggers and the pincered and agile Blue Horrors. The greph have their own breed of human Super Soldier in the Giants, who are twice the size of a normal human and superhumanly strong.
  • The Draka: Homo Drakensis is engineered to be the perfect predator of human beings. They are faster, smarter, and stronger than any normal human and able to dominate the minds of others through pheromone control. The Draka believe that one or two Drakenses is an adequate force to establish dominance over a world full of unaltered humans given enough time. Even before the Draka actually became superhuman, your average Draka citizen soldier was worth several of the enemy due to his/her superior equipment, conditioning and morale.
  • A Dry, Quiet War by Tony Daniel involves soldiers from a war at the end of time 15 billion years in the future, who are almost unkillable because their bodies extend into alternate timelines.
  • Dune:
    • Sardaukar are the Emperor's finest troops, recruited from societies on hostile worlds to find the toughest of the tough.
    • Fremen prove to be even better fighters than Sardaukar, having survived in an extremely martial culture on the most hostile world of all, Arrakis. Once Paul and Jessica train them, they are even more dangerous.
    • Later, God-Emperor Leto uses the Sardaukar gene pool to breed the all-female Fish Speakers as his private enforcers.
  • Empire from the Ashes gives us anybody from either the Fourth or Fifth Imperium military (Battle Fleet or Imperial Marines). Dahak's "improvements" make a Fifth Imperium soldier a serious super soldier compared to a Fourth Imperium super soldier. Talk about helping someone Take a Level in Badassery.
  • Ender's Game: Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin and the rest of the Battle School students; note that they were trained, not to fight personally, but as super-generals. The spin-off Ender's Shadow series has a scientist attempt to use genetic engineering to create super-intelligent people with the downside being an extremely low lifespan. Bean is the only survivor of the program.
  • Ex-Heroes: Project Krypton creates supersoldiers. It involves altering the soldier's brains so that they can operate constantly at "mother lifting a car off her child" levels. Unfortunately the brain eventually forms new neural pathways and the soldiers' abilities degrade over time.
  • Firestarter: The main character, Charlie, is the result of her parents, Andy and Vicky, having been part of what they thought was a medical study on LSD. It was actually an experiment by the secretive government agency The Shop, using a hallucinogenic drug called Lot 6 that also produced superhuman mutations. The experiment was seemingly a failure, as all but three participants were driven insane or committed suicide, and Andy and Vicky only developed very limited telepathic and telekinetic abilities (the third survivor didn't get any powers at all). However, Charlie ends up developing extremely potent pyrokinesis that only keeps growing as she matures. As a result, The Shop is obsessed with turning her into a super soldier.
  • Genome: In Dances on the Snow, Phages (AKA Knights of Avalon) are genetically-engineered special operatives, who have superhuman strength, speed, and reaction time (although not nearly to comic book levels), as well as training in combat, infiltration, computer systems, starship piloting, and using the Compelling Voice. In addition, they also have an innate desire to do the right thing, which isn't always the logical thing, in stark contrast to the overly rational (in their opinion) society. Their weapon is a semi-living plasma whip, which can be used as both a weapon and a tool. They admit that plasma whips may not be as efficient and powerful as common blasters, but they're far more versatile. Oh, and don't go around calling them Jedi; they don't like that. A century later, when the first novel Genome is set, advances in genetic engineering have made Phages obsolete, since a sizable percentage of humans in the galaxy are now "specialized". Those of the Fighter specialization are capable of even greater feats than the Phages (e.g. Flash Stepping).
  • Gladiator: Hugo Danner has a professor father who experimented on him as a fetus, so that he developed a reasonable degree of Nigh-Invulnerability and Super-Strength. Trapped in World War I, he becomes a Super Soldier killing as many German soldiers as he can for the French Foreign Legion. He decides to win the war by Instant-Win Condition: hijacking a plane, infiltrating Germany and killing the German Emperor and his generals to force a Decapitated Army. Unfortunately, Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs, and the war ends on his own accord. The truth is, modern wars (maybe since the nineteenth century) are not won nor lost by soldiers anymore, but by economic and politic reasons bigger than any human being's control.
  • The first sci-fi story George R. R. Martin published, "Hero", is about this trope. The protagonist is a Heavyworlder raised and trained on a War World, with drugs used to maintain his speed and stamina. Despite his superior trying to dissuade him, he decides to retire to Earth at the end of his enlistment instead of returning to his native planet like his colleagues, thinking he'll be a hero there instead of just another retired soldier. Instead, he's murdered by his superiors who have no intention of letting such a dangerous person anywhere near ordinary humans.
  • In The History of the Galaxy, the advances in brain implant tech have resulted in some people being given at least half a dozen brain implants that allow them to interact with technology on an unprecedented level. Cybreakers are futuristic hackers with many implants. It's useless to threaten them with a standard-issue Magnetic Weapon, as they'll simply disable it remotely. You'd have to find an ancient chemical slug-thrower to be effective. Besides, since everyone has at least one brain implant since they're children (for controlling basic tech), a Cybreaker can just hack it and do things like scan a person's memories, implant false sensory input, or just fry the brain. Mnemonics are Cybreakers trained to fight the criminal ones. There are also Battle Mnemonics, who are the offensive version. They are trained from childhood to be able to take on a dozen Cybreakers at once. In later books, the Confederacy Navy starts using Mnemonics as the pilots of their newest fighter craft due to the great number of advanced systems onboard. Some are even able to hide the craft from enemy sensors by constantly tuning the specialized sensor and shield packages on the fighter.
  • Honor Harrington:
  • In Matt Sudain's trippy Black Comedy SF novel about food reviews, Hunters & Collectors, there's the Water Bear legion which bodyguard Gladys "Good Night" came from. The Water Bears were originally female clones made for working in weapon factories for a star system that specializes in arms manufacturing. The clones were genetically engineered to be small in size and have superior vision and stamina for the hard and delicate task of assembling electronics for weapons. When the factories came under a more liberal new management, the practice of creating clone workers was discontinued. Despots and criminals believed the system was ripe for conquest, but before they could do so, the factories got volunteer clones to undergo further enhancement (including not needing sleep because only one half of the brain is unconscious when tired) and elite commando training. After the assassinations of a few prominent dictators, enemies decide to leave the factories and their new Water Bears alone.
  • Hyperion Cantos:
    • The Shrike — if a metallic, nine-foot-tall, time-bending, godlike killing machine covered in spikes doesn't qualify as a supersoldier, nothing does.
    • Also, Rhadamanth Nemes and her twins. They manage to take on the Shrike and survive. One of them even temporarily defeats it!
  • The Infected: It's more of a background thing, the heroes being part of a rather militarized federal agency, but in the Cold War both the United States and Soviet militaries employed Infected supersoldiers in the form of Alpha and Bravo Teams for the U.S., and Spetsnaz Ultima for the Russians.
  • Painless soldiers in the Inheritance Cycle. They are incapable of feeling pain, so they can fight with stuff like missing limbs and crushed sternums. Nothing is Squickier than fighting a laughing madman with only half a face. Those soldiers didn't feel pain, so they didn't exhibit a survival instinct, allowing them to be easily led into traps.
  • Joe Ledger: Berserkers from Dragon Factory. Transgenic soldiers created from individuals who were already hardened mercenaries, they're inhumanly big, strong, fast and tough, with some other abilities including heightened senses. The only downside is, in combat their bloodlust may get hard to control.
  • Australian author Rick Kennett wrote several short stories about Cy De Gerch, a sixteen-year-old Martian girl who's genetically engineered to interact with the fire-control systems of a spaceship. Since she's not a Space Marine, she has minimal combat training, but her reflexes still make her dangerous in hand-to-hand combat.
  • In Kieli, the main character Harvey is an 'Undying', an undead soldier that was created from the corpse of a soldier who had died in combat. Upon being reanimated, the Undying are nigh-unstoppable. They don't have any more strength or speed than a regular human, but they aren't affected by pain (although they still feel it), they don't age, do not need nourishment or sleep, and they can take nearly any amount of damage and keep going. Harvey, at one point, had half of his head blown off, along with one leg and an arm. Though it took months, he recovered. The only way to kill an Undying is by ripping its 'core' out of its chest, as the core is what gives them animation. After the war, the Church (who originally created the Undying to win the world war they were fighting) began to hunt them down and slaughter them mercilessly, offering a massive bounty for anyone who located or killed an Undying. Despite being technically dead, the Undying still have the same emotional capacity and personality that they did when they were alive, so the scant few who escaped the Church's massacre went on the run. At the beginning of the story, Harvey has been avoiding the Church for eighty years and counting.
  • In Line of Delirium, a professional bodyguard named Kai Dutch reveals that he was created as one of these in secret, as genetic engineering is illegal in The Empire. For the first 15 years of his life, he was a weakling and constantly bullied (and raped). Once he hits 16, he hits a huge growth spurt and develops superhuman strength, speed, reaction time, and analytical powers. However, even when he has to fight a Meklar hand-to-hand (normally a death sentence to any non-Meklar), he has a doctor (working for The Mafia) give him tons of "enhancements" and a "battle cocktail" that turns him into a killing machine that can survive a few minutes against a Meklar.
  • In The Lord of the Rings, the Uruk-Hai are Super Soldier Orcs. It's notable that they're bred for it; they are speculated by Treebeard to be hybrids of human and orc, while in the movies, it's regular orcs and goblins (which are the orc equivalent of gnomes or dwarves), capitalizing on Hybrid Power.
  • In Machine Man, this is the goal of Better Future's Corrupt Corporate Executive, the Manager. Better Future eventually starts making them, with Carl being given prototype arms and Charles Neumann, after being recaptured, being crammed chock full of military prototype hardware.
  • The koloss from Mistborn are artificially created killing machines that can take out whole squads of human soldiers by themselves, though they lack any real capacity for subtlety or tactics. Their primary drawback, though, is that they're berserkers — once a koloss army has been unleashed and gone into frenzy, they're nearly impossible to rein in until the frenzy has passed and will kill anything non-koloss (and sometimes other koloss too, if they can't get anything else) that crosses their path. This means that you can't deploy your koloss near human population centers you don't want levelled.
  • The Moreau Series deals heavily with the aftermath of this trope, with the novels' soldiers being Artificial Animal People who eventually became second-class citizens after the war they were built for ended.
  • The serjants of The Night's Dawn Trilogy are initially used to police Tranquility, and later used as the front-line troops to fight the possessed.
  • Nova Refuge: Several super-soldier programs are underway in the four largest human nations. Xarkon's Enomeg program and Victory's Immortal Soldiers are the prime example. Not considered true super-soldiers but the closest they have, Zygbar and Grimm's Mercenary Army have the Highlanders and the Aerials respectively.
  • The Colonial Defense Force from Old Man's War. Earthborn humans are given the option to join the off-world military instead of retiring at age 75. Once off-planet, their consciousness is transferred to a genetically engineered body grown from their DNA. Notable in that the entire force from privates to generals consist of supersoldiers. (It's made very clear that unenhanced humans wouldn't last five minutes against the aliens they have to fight.) The Special Forces are much worse: they are born with the knowledge of how to be supersoldiers, and not much else. They make a conscious comparison between themselves and Frankenstein's Monster as part of the series' general commentary on the ethics of super soldiery.
  • In the Paradox Trilogy, symbionts are Terran super-soldiers created by implanting living alien tissue into their brains and bodies. They are extraordinarily fast and strong with a powerful Healing Factor to boot, but are only created in limited numbers because the implants can cause mental instability.
  • The Postman: 'Augments', of which there were two varieties: one cybernetically altered and chosen for their psychopathic tendencies, the other trained in exotic meditation techniques and chosen for their high sense of ethics.
  • Rebuild World: Haruka is a teenaged Tyke-Bomb raised in the Rebuild Institute's secret facilities as part of a Secret War. She was originally just a Differently Powered Individual called an Old World Connector capable of Telepathy and enhanced capability for processing information as a result. She was given a Super Serum based on Lost Technology that allows for Voluntary Shapeshifting, Pulling Herself Together, splitting into multiple beings (like two of herself or several spider drones) and recombining, and regenerating From a Single Cell.
  • Release That Witch: God's Punishment Army, a legion of superhuman warriors who have Super-Strength, Feel No Pain, and obey orders absolutely.
  • Second Apocalypse: The "weapon races" play this very pragmatically. Rather than create a "perfect soldier," the Consult created a number of creatures as biological weapons against humanity. The Consult gave them all a sexual compulsion toward carnage and pointed them at humanity.
    • Scranc are small, stupid and not particularly dangerous individually, but they are designed to destroy armies through attrition. They breed explosively, survive on almost nothing, and attack in relentless Zerg Rushes until even the finest regiments are too exhausted to fight back.
    • Bashrags are giant, ogre-like creatures for attacking things that more easily resist large numbers of small creatures, such as siege weapons.
    • Skin-spies are shape-changing espionage agents, infiltrating armies and governments to wreak sabotage.
  • The Unsullied in A Song of Ice and Fire, a type of eunuch slave soldier using armament and tactics similar to Greek hoplites. Due to brutal training and drug use from a young age, the Unsullied are robotically loyal, utterly fearless, and immune to pain. However, their castration during youth causes them to lack raw muscular power. They are also specifically not one man armies, being far more effective in their phalanx fighting formation. The point of their training isn't to make them physically superhuman, but to give them superhuman discipline, maintaining good order in any situation from a hopeless battle to the sack of a city.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • It's found that Project Starscream, an Imperial bioweapons project responsible for a number of threats in Galaxy of Fear, has the end goal of creating an Ultimate Life Form Super Soldier with the abilities of all those other threats. Only the first is met then and there — as a baby in a pod, who gets to adulthood and then monsterhood within a day — but it's clear that if the plans and prototypes hadn't been destroyed there would have been more.
    • New Jedi Order:
    • The Null-Class ARC Troopers from the Republic Commando Series were the first twelve prototype clones made from Jango Fett's DNA, though only six would be "born". The Kaminoan Cloners deemed them a failure and attempted to exterminate the then-child clones, but they were saved and adopted by one of the Mandalorian mercenaries hired to train the Clone Commandos, Kal Skirata. Skirata raised them and trained them as a "Black Ops" clone force, resulting in the Nulls being loyal only to Kal. The Nulls varied from the ordinary clone, and even the successful Alpha-Class ARC trooper in that they were stronger, faster, larger, smarter and each one had an eidetic memory.
  • In The Sun Eater, humanity, despite being the Higher-Tech Species, are barely holding ground in a centuries long war against the superhuman Cielcin. Things get worse when the Cielcin join forces with renegade human technologists, the Extrasolarians. The result are the Chimeras, bionic Cielcin warriors who are armored in adamant (the only material that can withstand a high-matter blade) and have built-in plasma burners and arm blades. Finally, the Chimera have their already superhuman strength and speed greatly augmented, making each a One-Man Army.
  • The Takeshi Kovacs novels feature a whole variety of augmentations and genetically engineered supersoldier bodies. However, the premise of the universe (that FTL travel is only possible by beaming your consciousness to another planet and downloading yourself into a new body) means that the ultimate soldiers are 'Envoys' who undergo an intense mental version of The Spartan Way to condition them to fight effectively in a new and unfamiliar body.
  • In Daniel Keys Moran's Tales of the Continuing Time, the Peaceforcer Elites are made into Super Soldiers through a grueling series of gene therapies and cyborgizing surgeries. Tens of thousands of years ago, the Old Human Race made Super Soldiers through genetic engineering and sheer badassery. Additionally, the Unification's Project Superman experimented with gene modification to produce the de Nostri (a human-leopard mix), and a group of telepaths, both as attempts at Super Soldiers. One team was especially effective, consisting of a telepath (Carl Castanaveras), a Peaceforcer Elite (Christian Summers) and a de Nostri (Jacqueline).
  • That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime:
    • The Otherworlders are often sought after by various human kingdoms to serve as this. In this world, humans on average lack access to magic or skills, and in order to harness it one must either be born with the aptitude or risk one's life living in Magicule-rich environments in order to passively absorb them and gain the ability to wield them as high levels of environmental Magicules are toxic to life that isn't adapted to it. Otherworlders, on the other hand, acquire a massive amount of magicules from the process of crossing the dimensional plane to this world and have plenty of natural talent at harnessing magic and Skills as a result. "Summons" are often the result of attempting this, but not every Otherworlder develops the combat Skills (or even possesses the fighting mindset) wanted. Plus, child Otherworlders often don't develop the Skills to channel their Magicule supplies at all, and as a result their underdeveloped bodies can't handle their power and they die young.
    • The Holy Empire of Ruberios and the Western Saints Church has their paladins, considered the elite of their military. Each one is trained rigorously to master the combat arts, given high-tier weaponry and equipment, and are often trained in various magics such as Elemental, Summons, and/or Holy depending on their strengths. Even the average paladin is on record as being called worth 1000 normal human soldiers. The strongest paladins are ranked among the Ten Great Saints, each being at least an Enlightened/Sage, and their leader is Hinata Sakaguchi, a Saint who mastered all the combat arts and magics taught to her, wields Legendary-class weapons and armaments that allow her to temporarily stand up against True Demon Lord-level threats, and is considered by almost everyone who knows of her as the strongest human outside of the Eastern Empire.
    • The Eastern Empire boasts a total military strength of 2.1 million soldiers, which quantity-wise is by far the largest army in the world. As this is a world where Humans Are Average and monsters capable of destroying entire towns or single-handedly slaughter an army of normal humans are frighteningly commonplace, they've also taken the time to shore up their troops quality-wise.
      • The Armored Division, the main division of the army, has subjected its members to magical modifications that allow them to survive a full week without eating or drinking alongside increasing their physical parameters. They're also equipped with the latest of Otherworlder technology, including firearms, tanks, and airships. Rimuru actually noted that these augumentations along with the technology level makes them superior to a first-world modern army.
      • The Magic Beasts Division has utilized and weaponized DNA analysis technology to create and breed powerful Demonic Beasts that are ridden by warriors carefully screened and trained for the job. They've also developed a special secret drug that would in theory allow the rider and beast to perform a Fusion Dance to become a Monster Knight of even greater power, but the potential risks of death, insanity, and/or permanent monster transformation mean it's only meant as a last resort.
      • The Composite Division are technically the Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits of the army, where the fighters too uncontrollable were placed. The reason they're so "uncontrollable" is because most of them are Otherworlders blessed with unique sets of skills and physical/magical abilities that makes it too awkward to organize them as a proper disciplined military force. This is also the place where human experimentation to produce more powerful soldiers was carried out, resulting in the creation of unique "human weapons" that remained under the banner.
      • Finally, there's the Imperial Guard, the 100 chosen warriors of The Emperor. Together, they're considered worth the other three corps combined, as each fighter is at least the level of an Enlightened/Sage and equipped with Legendary-class equipment (which according to Rimuru, comparing such a weapon to a "normal" weapon is like "bringing a machinegun to a sword fight"). The single digits are even stronger, having all the advantages of the double digits at bare minimum combined with receiving a blessing from the Emperor that grants them a pseudo-Ultimate Skill, making them borderline Reality Warpers. The top six in particular are at the level of Saints and wielding the even stronger Mythical/God-class equipment and capable of matching up against True Demon Lord level foes. The top two were even capable of matching blows with two of the seven Primordial Demons, one of which is powerful enough to destroy the planet.
  • The Specials in Uglies have bones made of aircraft material with servos inside for better movement, artificial muscles that are stronger and don't get sore, weaponized fingernails and teeth filed to sharp points, nanobots in their blood that allow them to heal quickly, antennas implanted in their skin to allow for more efficient communication between themselves, a direct link to the city's interface that they can manifest as a GUI by closing their eyes and thinking about it, and an artificial addition to their brain that gives them enhanced senses and reflexes, a serious superiority complex towards non-Specials, and violent tendencies. Oh, and their facial features are modeled to look vaguely lupine to stir up the primal fear of predators in unmodified humans.
  • Subverted in the Vorkosigan Saga short story "Labyrinth"; the 'super-soldier' was designed by a committee with no actual soldiers on it and is flashy but massively impractical. The effect is rather spoiled by the fact that the prototype frequently appears in later stories as a very effective soldier.
  • The Hradani of The War Gods are bigger, faster and stronger than humans, twisted by magic to become berserkers in combat.
  • War With No Name has an inhuman variation. The Alpha soldier ants are specially bred by a mutant colony of ants to exterminate humanity. Capable of standing upright to 10 feet tall, the Alpha are intended to have carapaces so tough that gun and cannon fire just bounces off them and powerful enough to rip through tanks. In addition, the Queen of them, Hymenoptera Unus (humans refer to her as the Devil's Hand, the Monarch of the Underworld), has the power of imparting Genetic Memory, so the Alpha quickly become expert warriors. In actuality, the Alphas aren't nearly so impressive. While certainly very dangerous and a big reason for humanity losing against the Colony, the Alphas aren't nearly as strong or invulnerable as hoped; plus, the sections between their carapace are highly vulnerable. They're also barely sentient and require a host of smaller ants to guide them.
  • The Wheel of Time: Light Warders can be considered Super Soldiers since due to their bond with their Aes Sedai they gain increased strength and endurance. Combined with receiving the best possible training in the world, they are a formidable opponents.
  • Wolfbreed has The Teutonic Knights try and turn a bunch of werewolf children into elite shock troops and commandos.

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