"One of the most massive shifts from the 20th century to a more modern style of warfare, was in that wars were no longer fought on the offensive. With the invention of gunpowder weapons, even as early as the primitive musket, it was no longer feasible to compete with defensive technology. Wars throughout the 20th century, and into the 21st century, were fought defensively-- but later into the 21st century, it started to become feasible for countries to equip their soldiers with armour that still allowed for mobility, but provided protection from most types of guns. This wasn't what caused the shift to defensive warfare; when soldiers got mechanical armour, the enemy just got rocket launchers instead of machine guns.
At the very start of the war, it seemed that it would be carried out just like any early 21st century, or 20th century war; with aircraft, biological weapons, missiles, tanks, and other heavy war machines doing the fighting. But the real war would be fought by genetically enhanced soldiers. As you will study later in this chapter, these soldiers had varying modifications to help change the face of war. The first introduction of enhanced soldiers was by China, half a year into the war-- a squadron of their Magnet soldiers (see page 49) annihilated an entire American landing party. Shortly afterwards, both the United States, Russia, Canada, and Japan revealed their own enhanced soldier programs, and the frontlines started to be filled more and more with these soldiers. By the time the remaining major powers in the war revealed their own programs, the face of warfare had changed forever; we could no longer afford to fight wars on the offensive."
- Extract from Grade 11 CanadaLinks: Our War
That was, in fact, the same very passage that Steve's history teacher, Ms. Drahn, had a member of the class read aloud. When he was done, she started to write the next assignment on the chalkboard.
"Okay, you're now going to read through the next chapter, and write an essay on the traits from enhanced soldiers passed onto their children. Should be around 200 to 300 words, you don't need to use any citations," she told the class. "Any questions?"
A student in the back of the class raised his hand, "Where do babies come from?" Several people in the class laughed; neither Ken, Steve, nor their teacher were among them.
"Ugh... this is gonna be a long day..." Ken muttered to Steve, who sat in the desk beside him.
"You say that every day," Steve quietly responded, jotting down the notes.
"Yeah, and there's a good reason for it." Ken then shut up, because Ms. Drahn was giving out detentions.
***
A beep came from Steve's computer, and another line of text appeared in the chat window.
«And you found all this in your attic?» appeared at the bottom of the window. The "speaker," was a good friend of Steven, and was known simply to him as Alty. She was a very close friend, and the two of them had a lot in common, despite the fact that she lived in Ireland; a first world country.
«Yeah. Talk about weird, huh?» Steve replied. It'd be good to note that his hands, while he typed, never actually touched the keyboard. Steve's room in general, in fact, was not what you'd consider normal.
The walls of his room were very bare, with no posters, nothing. There were actually dirty clothes in the laundry bin, rather than the floor, and nothing blocked the fire escape in his room. To the casual observer, the cleanliness of his room would seem supernatural; especially for a teenager.
But important, even though Steve's mother could clearly afford a fairly modern computer-- only 15 years old, he still had one of the older types of keyboards attached to it; the type that were seen commonly in the 20th century and at the turn of the century, with big extruding keys. That wasn't really so unusual, plenty of people liked that type of keyboard. What was more unusual was the dimes lined up, on top of every key. And the fact that he never actually touched the keyboard as he typed. It didn't really speed up his typing that much, but that didn't stop him from having it like that anyway.
«Yeah... well... if they really are the-- whatever the hell they are-- magnet things of that American soldier, you should really stop and think about what that means,» appeared on Steve's screen half a minute later.
«I am thinking about what this means, god dammit! It means I know what my father was! And it would certainly explain a whole lot of shit,» he replied. His excitement wasn't lost entirely in the text, but most of his expression was.
«Well, if he is... I'm sure he'd be extremely proud to have a daughter like you,» was Alty's encouragement. «But you should go and look at them some more, make sure they really are what you think they are.»
«Har har. Yeah, I'm sure he would be.» I don't think Steve's sarcasm, however, was lost in the text at all. «Look, when I wear those gauntlet-things, I can actually... well, push and pull metal around and shit... like, serious stuff, not just screwing around with pennies.»
«Uh huh. Okay,» Alty tried to wrap up the awkward conversation. She was also starting to wonder the truthfulness of what Steve was saying; it all seemed pretty amazing to her. «Anyway, I'm really sorry, really... and I hate to leave you right now, but I've got a date with Kevin in like, an hour. I'll talk to you later, alright?»
«Yeah. Fine. Seeya,» Steve typed, coming across as far more hostile than intended.
And with that, Alty went offline.
Steve sighed, and slumped back against his chair. Man, did I fuck that up with her? he wondered. But he'd had conversations with her that had gone far worse before-- many of them were about transsexuality, and ended up being much, much more emotional than that one, even if it did seem like Alty was brushing him off.
He'd been getting that a whole lot more. Conversations just got more and more frustrating, and communication breakdown seemed like a constant. Most teenagers whine and complain about how nobody understands their problems; but as Alty's "daughter" comment alluded to, Steve's problems were genuinely hard to communicate and relate to.
Steve glanced at the box that he'd found, of what he assumed to be his father's belongings.
"You know..." he started to say to himself.
***
Not surprisingly, Steve was part of the third of the class who actually bothered to write the essay. While Ms. Drahn was busy scolding the usual people who never bothered to do anything on time, Steve pulled out a piece of paper and started to sketch boredly. The whole process would span something that felt like ten minutes, and Steve didn't care to listen to it that day. Or any other day, ever.
"You know... I swear. It takes longer and longer every day for class to actually start," Ken whispered, reflecting Steve's thoughts exactly. Well, okay, not exactly.
"Yeah, well, if you had actually done the work... maybe we wouldn't have to sit through this," Steve whispered back. He continued to sketch away.
"...but right now, read from page 49 to 53. This talks about the first enhanced soldiers created under the programs of each country."
A significant section of the class didn't bother to do anything, but Ken and Steve were not among them. They started to read the pages.
"You know..." Ken said, after reading partway through. "It's no wonder we got our asses kicked so badly, especially in the start. I mean, shit... these Magnets sound pretty damn amazing. And what'd the yankees start out with? Fucking snipers and a bunch of strong guys. And Canada might as well have been the US. Meanwhile, the Chinese have guys who bounce around off anything metal and are completely bulletproof... Christ. That really seems nuts."
"Yeah, well, don't a lot of gangs have Magnets around now, too?" Steve asked.
"Oh yeah. Makes it damn near impossible to shoot up any gang because of it. Far as I know, anyway," Ken replied quietly. "I dunno what the Chinese outfits for 'em looked like, but I guess the US must have started producing equivalents at some point, too, because I've seen the American armour for them; it's pretty damn awesome looking."
"No shit?" Steve feigned curiousity. He already knew all about the Magnet soldiers. He also knew exactly what the armour (if you could call it that) was for; amplifying their magnetic abilities. He didn't tell Ken that.
"Man. It's like, the more you read about the war, the more fucked up it seems."
***
«So it turns out, most of them ended up getting killed in the line of duty. Only ones that really managed to survive were the ones stationed far enough home that when North America started to get attacked, they managed to hold out until the surrender. Not too many survived... but I guess they went on to live normal lives or something. But man, I can't find a damned bit of information after that. There's really like, nothing there.»
«Ouch...» Alty responded. «How can you be sure that your father was really one of those Magnet soldiers, though?» She was getting pretty tired of that conversation; consoling Steve on the emotional stress that came from his problems was one thing, but she really didn't care enough about Steve's theories-- which she didn't know if he was just full of shit or not on-- to keep listening. But he didn't have many people to talk to, so she'd give him that.
«I can fling metal across the room without moving my hand, and pick up coins from like, two feet away. And then I found a box of the Magnet soldier's shit in my house. I'm pretty damn sure.»
«Right,» was the only thing that Alty had as a response. This would later be something she regretted; and she started to type up another reply.
«God dammit, fine, you don't believe me? Fuck off, then... I'll talk to someone who actually cares about me.» Steve hit the "disconnect" button, angrily.
If he had waited just a few more seconds, he would have seen her second response, and might not have been so upset.
Steve looked back at the box of the magnet soldier's equipment, it starting to quickly take over his thoughts again. He grabbed the box, pulling it up to his desk. A fairly poorly-drawn picture of a teenage girl wearing the magnet armour and a mask lay on his desk; a couple other sketches of the same type lay underneath. His TV was on in the background, although he wasn't paying attention to it; it was on the all news channel, and nothing new had come in recently.
It wasn't long until he was completely distracted by the equipment again.
In another part of the city, though, Ken was also busy doing very different, although just as unusual.
"Hand over the gun. I will not say it twice," the loud, monotonous voice boomed at a 16-year-old. The kid was wearing a teal and black bandana; gang colours.
The boy tried to hand it over, but his hands were shaking so much he dropped the gun. This was the fourth day that Ken had been out in the armour; he hadn't made much of a reputation, but people were now starting to recognize him, and very few people had any desire to fuck with him. This kid wasn't one of them.
However, there was someone out there who was; and he glanced at the TV as the report came in.
"...This is Jenna Rook reporting live from Ottawa, where the wearer of the stolen AVN-6 armour has appeared yet again, making a fourth appearance since it was stolen originally. He's gotten into another gunfight with several members of the Hell's Fire gang; and doesn't appear to be hurt at all. It looks like..." came from Steve's television.
Jenna Rook was, in fact, completely wrong. When Ken would later watch that on the 11 o'clock news, he'd be rather annoyed. The armour was completely absorbing the damage, the bullets doing little more than ping off it; he was still getting hit by bullets, which really did hurt. That, and the fact that his appearance on camera wasn't making him look good, was starting to really piss him off.
The Hell's Fire and Nightmare Crew were rival gangs. Ken going against members of them didn't make him look good; just like he was taking gang wars to a new level of violence. It wasn't true, of course, but most people didn't know that. Including Steve.
"Oh, I'd love to go show him..." he muttered, watching the armoured man on the news shoot at the gang members. He opened one of the gauntlets, as if to put it on. These gang wars are just getting worse and worse. That armoured thief's a fucking nightmare. He was sure of one thing: he wasn't going to sit by idly any more while his city turned even worse. He was getting sick of watching more and more violence. He knew that he wasn't going to take it any more. Steve started to put on the gauntlet.
"Steve! Come down for dinner!" his mother yelled from the main floor.
He sighed. Now wasn't a good time. He wasn't about to run off now. He slammed his fist against the desk.
"Fuck!" he said angrily to himself. "Maybe next time..."