Five years ago Ratmir Pelmitov came to Dalatyr from a small village in search of a better life for his family. He and his wife Elena had both heard enough of the incredible new city and their daughter had done well in the village school that it seemed like a good idea to move there. Like many recent immigrants without much in the line of skills or education he and his wife ended up doing a bunch of odd jobs to get by. Then the Escort War happened. At first that meant that the odd jobs were a bit different than they were before, but five months in he got permanent employment at Dalatyr Arsenal-7.





He'd help put up the building beforehand. There were a number of crash construction projects with day laborers shifting between them doing basic carpentry, mixing mortar, shoveling and similar jobs were needed to either refit old buildings or set up new ones. He'd worked on seven of them intermittently and just happened to be on sight when they were finishing up Arsenal-7's main structure when a Foreman asked him about setting up the machines. Once that was done he was offered a job in the factory itself as it slowly came "On Line" and began to turn out Revolvers. First he worked as a sander and varnisher but with some training in the basics of machine tool use and maintenance under the tutelage of skilled technicians. By the end of the war he was decent lathe operator and mechanical odd job man who could help sort out common issues.





While he did not have much experience to compare things to, he did hear a lot of grumblings from the Technicians and the Engineers about the gear. From what he picked up it was not as good as they used to be. All but one of the machine tools were hooked up by belts running from the ceiling instead of being electric, two of them were old and others were apparently just slapped together using older designs and there were more complaints on top of that. Other industries had it worse. Ratmir had to take their word for it, but there was a fair number of reject parts which they had to either send back or throw out as well as breakdowns.







With the conclusion of The Escort War, the days of Arsenal-7 were numbered. There was less of a need for weapons what was in truth a rather slapped together operation was no longer required. For a few months production continued to finish their current quota and once the last revolver was boxed and sent on it's way and the facility was shut down. Most of the staff was soon transferred elsewhere leaving Ratmir and about two dozen other guys to take things apart under the supervision of Engineer Filhod. Ratmir felt a little bit sad as he finished the process by tarping up the last Milling Machine as other such items loaded up onto wagons and lorries for reallocation to other projects of which there was. His task completed, he went home with a letter of recommendation in his pocket which would help him find other work in a wide range of factories.







There were myriad consequences of the Escort War for Infrastructure economically. In a few respects it did accelerate plans. Ratmir and thousands of people like him did gain some skills which would be useful in other fields due to crash training programs. But in far more it was setback. A large section of the Industrial Output of the nation went towards building weapons, warships, munitions and materiel and rapidly expanding the capacity to produce said things. This had come at the expense at basically everything else, most notably the development of newer and better mechanisms. Before the war a lot of Infrastructure's resources were dedicated to making cutting edge equipment with the goals of producing even better equipment in the long term. Instead efforts were focused on producing at best current generation gear and more often last generation if not older designs and otherwise simplified equipment. Things that worked for their immediate needs and could be produced in large numbers with what they had on hand, providing a short term boost to total productivity in certain fields at the expense of a net drop of the productivity of each individual worker and delaying further further breakthroughs. When combined with other things such as delays to expanding the rail network , reduced production of agricultural machinery, transport capacity being used for military ends, breakdowns due to a lack of spare parts in other fields or improper maintenance, cancelled projects, shuffling of resources, industrial accents, mounting debts and other such factors the result was that the Committee's plans were delayed by more than five years.







Getting back on track meant shifting people and gear to more productive enterprises. About half of Arsenal-7s machines would be assigned to Roadsteamer production with others being allocated elsewhere, put into storage or auctioned off. Fourteen Years latter Ratmir would be surprised to see the "For Lev" milling machine again in a friend's workshop, which would spark a pleasant conversation.



