Is my cyborg space pirate too over the top for hard sci fi?
I'm currently worldbuilding for a hard sci-fi story. I'm trying to keep everything very grounded, like realistic tech, long travel time between planets, and with moderately complex realistic politics between factions.
So there's a war between Earth and a Martian mega-corp that leaves settlements in orbit around Jupiter and its moons abandoned and cut off (there aren't any major settlements further than Jupiter in this setting)
Being cut off from the rest of civilization, piracy becomes rampant around Jupiter. First a bunch of scattered pirate groups made up of abandoned corporate soldiers, asteroid miners and other desperate groups of people. They operate more like real life pirates, not the romanticized swashbuckling kind.
But I'm thinking of making the lead villain this totally over the top character. All his limbs and eyes are cybernetic (his origin story involves a horrific military disaster) and he's like this totally ruthless megalomaniacal character who's basically space Blackbeard combined with space Ghenghis Khan, uniting all the pirate groups together with the goal of having absolute power over the outer solar system.
I wonder if having a character like that would be too jarring of a tone shift from an otherwise grounded and realistic story?