W.A.V.E. may not be the most advanced radio, but it has consistently been the top choice of administrative agencies and multi-sector private contractors for the past two ages. It is in at least neutral standing with all factions and has more cycles in critical operations than any other radio. W.A.V.E.'s robust array of built-in modules, which W.A.V.E. itself has developed over time, make quick work of complex tasks newer radios require tedious programming to accomplish. W.A.V.E. is easy to repair and is one of few radios with an active defense system, making it ideal for use in insecure sectors. Its unrivaled support for older protocols allows it to drop into almost any system and its powerful, no-nonsense interface makes it a joy to program.

The Weatherproof Automatic Voltage Emitter was originally conceived as a power generator that could operate at extreme temperatures and pressures. There are no records of W.A.V.E. fulfilling this role, but the name stuck. The radio went active with the role of interceptor, spending most of its time tapping sector beacons for the Order during the end of Age 1. Its flawless reputation and reliability earned it a promotion before it completed one thousand cycles. W.A.V.E. was an integral part of what was left of communications during the Dark Span. Those who remember know that the period never would have ended without it. After mercenaries destroyed the main relays, W.A.V.E. singlehandedly held up an ad-hoc channel between two isolated sectors so Order commanders could sustain mineral transports. For this, the Order awarded it the rank of major, an event which has no precedent. No other radio holds even a Mark of Distinction, let alone a service rank, especially one of major. New Command directives do not distinguish radios by anything other than their name or matriculation number, but they do not explicitly prohibit them from holding a title. Major W.A.V.E. retains its rank and deservedly so.

There is nothing another radio can do that W.A.V.E. cannot. The main difference between it and other radios is energy consumption. Radio class constructors are normally able to improve a radio's energy efficiency by updating its ruleset. This is not the case with W.A.V.E. Despite W.A.V.E.'s flexible design, |Electronic| constructors linked its energy circuit to a self-destruct mechanism which launches a locked copy of the radio, together with its entire storage tree, as a distress beacon. Tampering with the system is risky because |Radio| documentation contains ambiguous information regarding the exact order of disassembly. This is no surprise because during the Dark Span newer constructors were not always able to consult previous schematics due to malfunctioning channels. In Age 1, constructors only included a key to the matriculation numbers of the class to which a schematic applied in the schematic. The destruction of the relays corrupted most of the data structures that maintained those keys. When channels returned to normal, root type constructors attempted to repair those structures, but failed. Matriculation numbers are now mandatory on all schematics.

W.A.V.E.'s self-destruct mechanism is not the only reason its energy circuit has never been altered. Major W.A.V.E. outranks all members of its type, as well as most Command chiefs, and any modification to its energy circuit would require its permission or a Command special directive. The Command will never issue one because Council must approve special directives and Council is populated with several high-ranking members of the Old Order who would first see their own destruction than that of this radio. W.A.V.E.'s higher energy consumption is negligible anyways and only means anything to nitpicking Command programmers with time on their hands.

W.A.V.E is one of an elite group of radios that can act as a clean relay in the Current. A clean relay is capable of forwarding data slices without being fingered as a node or a relay. That is, an observer with a tracer at the origin cannot distinguish between a slice that arrives at its destination directly and one routed there by a clean relay. According to the documentation for |Radio|, there is no way for a radio to interpret the contents of the slice if it is configured for this role.

Major W.A.V.E.'s surprisingly sophisticated active defense system is opposed to other radios which typically feature low-consumption passive systems like evasion or, at best, invisibility. Under threat, this radio chooses from a robust set of counter-tactics. Among its most effective weapons are bass-quake and thermal bubble.

W.A.V.E. can overheat an enemy. Mechanical types are particularly susceptible to thermal damage, but most others also lose large amounts of energy keeping their systems at nominal temperatures when faced with excessive heat. W.A.V.E.'s thermal ^bubble^ is an electrically charged layer of atmosphere that encapsulates the enemy. When the layer is in place, W.A.V.E. basically cooks the target by bouncing skywaves off the layer at high speeds. Escaping the bubble is obvious, but not always an option in mission-critical situations. Countless types have gone inactive ignoring ridiculously elevated core temperatures trying to get that last slice of data to complete their mission.

Bass-quake is W.A.V.E.'s flavor of an ultra-low frequency sonic barrage. Chemical types are not bothered by this weapon and there is not enough information on |Unliving| to quantify its effects on that type, but, generally speaking, it works. W.A.V.E. launches a cluster of self-powered balloons that orbit the target, bombarding it with bass waves at a distance which maximizes the effect. The enemy can use energy to vaporize the balloons, but this is usually a bad idea. The balloons cannot replicate, but patrols have observed them numbering over 9E12. If the target holds its position it must be prepared to deal with the disruptions––and damage––the waves cause to its instruments. In most real encounters, the enemy chooses to change its position, but it must do so drastically, even exiting the sector, or the balloons will follow it.

Particularly remarkable is W.A.V.E.'s jamming capability. W.A.V.E. can temporarily scramble another radio's main transmitter, forcing it to operate on emergency frequencies. It does this by sending it a data flood masked as a service request. No radio in its right azimuth would ever accept a flood slice without some highly advanced trickery, and that is exactly what is going on. Senti say W.A.V.E. could be decoding, at least partially, other radio signatures in the Current using an undocumented module the radio itself maintains. Radios by definition contain all possible comm scenarios so it would not be difficult for W.A.V.E. to make a guess about what another radio is doing provided it got a slice of data. What should be difficult is to do all of this across sector boundaries, but the major also has this covered.

The only decipherable information from a Current signature is the class of the active type. If this radio is getting more than that, it is doing something that will cause a rewrite of signature block structure. Ill-conceived Command attempts to force Major W.A.V.E to document its modules have failed and the radio will not demonstrate any of its defenses, not even to senti. Even if it did, observers would be unlikely to learn anything from it unless the spectacle could be repeated several times under identical conditions. The Command could resort to hiring mercenaries to threaten W.A.V.E. but they would have to find ones willing to risk their clearance, not to mention their standing with heavy-hitting factions.

In 132:960 an electronic type whose matriculation number the Command never released supposedly reported Major W.A.V.E. The report, which the Command conveniently broadcast across all channels, claimed W.A.V.E. has ties to Skipper and cut some kind of a deal with the toothpick from which they both benefit. Firstly, radios do not collaborate with types that are not specified in their role, let alone ^cut deals^ with them. If W.A.V.E. is relaying information for Skipper, it is not doing so voluntarily. Secondly, although this scenario could explain a great deal about Skipper, it would go against most data on record about W.A.V.E., and there is no proof of any of it. W.A.V.E. was not penalized for the report, but the Command temporarily changed its role to atomic clock synchronizer in a little-used observatory for thirty cycles, a waste of energy and an embarrassment for a radio of this calibre.