SAVANT SYSTEMS

Internal Engineering Correspondence

Factory Complex 4 - Magnitogorsk

Section: Weapons Integration Division

Form ENG-12C

Subject: Frequently Repeated Apprentice Questions

Respondent: Sergei Rostov, Senior Weapons Integration Engineer

Compiled by: Human Resources (Technical Development)

Purpose: Reduce repeated interruptions to senior engineering staff.

Editor's Note: Responses have been lightly edited for professionalism. Original handwritten annotations available upon request.

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Q15. Why do we continue to manufacture legacy mechs instead of inventing new platforms?

Because a machine is a tool, not a fashion statement. This question appears every year, usually from someone who has spent more time reading advertisements than maintenance manuals. They assume old design means obsolete design. This is incorrect.

Every major combat platform currently produced by Savant Systems traces its lineage back to the hardsuits of the Age of Steel Skies. The Grendel has been revised nine times. The Valkyrie has undergone fourteen production standards. The Perun's weapon assembly has changed often enough that two examples built two years apart share very few internal parts. Externally, they look almost identical.

If it is not broken, why fix it? That is the difference. If we need a new mech, we will make a new mech. We do not need a new mech.

Q16. Are we winning / losing the Iron War?

Are you easily influenced by propaganda? 

What question is that? Do I look like a tactician? The Iron War is the reason we still exist, the reason I can go home tonight with food from the supermarket and kiss my kids goodnight in beds of their own. We build war machines, and business is booming. Losing Frostpoint and the Yamantau complex was a disappointment to us all, but the territory Axion Industries now holds will be taken back. This is our homeland.

Q17. Who are our enemies?

“Enemies” is a big word for little people. The only hate in my heart for our competitors is when a mech I just fixed comes back shot to shit. I would say to keep your thick head down and just work, but if it will mean I am asked this question less, I will answer.

Axion Industries:

American. Good engineers, terrible management. Mechs are flimsy and mass-produced. Their only true success was making the IRON chip first, and ever since they have coasted on their laurels. They will lose their territory in Russia. They are too fickle and easily disrupted.

Satori Enterprises:

They control the Asian market. Friendlier than most, but still our rivals. They prefer to keep to themselves in Japan, making their antirad concoctions and fancy healing injections. Ready to med, or whatever stupid English name they gave it. Their mechs are strong, reliable, but few in number. 

Saint Corp:

From Greece, but technically independent. Many times they used to pay us for armed security, and many times we contracted them for construction, but not so these days. We do not bother them much anymore, because they lack mechs and accountants are too hard to shoot. Also because they own forty-three percent of shipping insurance on European microchips.

Insurrectionists: 

Traitors and dissidents will always be a thorn in our side, but not since the fall of Vanguard have we seen any serious revolution. SPEAR is a recent player, but their attention is mostly on Axion and we welcome the distraction. 

Q18. Why are most of the experienced engineers being reassigned?

Because war consumes everything around it.

Twenty years ago this factory produced mining equipment, rail locomotives, agricultural machinery, construction cranes and reactor housings alongside military hardware. Walk through these halls today and count how many civilian production lines remain. You will finish counting very quickly.

Every experienced machinist becomes a weapons specialist. Every metallurgist eventually finds themselves improving armour alloys. Every electronics engineer spends enough time around targeting systems that they forget civilian circuit boards ever existed.

Management calls this efficient allocation of expertise. Perhaps they are right. But I still miss building trains.

Q19: What is the most important thing I should remember as a Savant engineer?

I was hoping the answer would be “stop asking questions.” Unfortunately Human Resources insists I leave you with something “constructive,” so here we are.

The machine in front of you does not care about deadlines, politics or quarterly earnings. It does not know whether it belongs to Savant Systems, Axion Industries or some militia held together with stolen parts and optimism. Steel has no ideology. Bearings do not become more reliable because your manager gives an inspiring speech. If you cut corners, the machine will know, even if nobody notices.

You will spend your career surrounded by people who believe victory comes from bigger reactors, longer cannons or faster production lines. They are usually promoted before they are proven wrong. Ignore them. Wars are not won by brilliant ideas alone. They are won by bolts tightened correctly, welds inspected twice, lubrication schedules followed without complaint and engineers willing to tell important people that their “genius new idea” will get somebody killed.

One day, perhaps years from now, one of your machines will return to this factory missing half its parts and carrying a pilot who should not have survived. You will examine the damage and discover that one screw, one weld or one bearing you installed months earlier held together just long enough to bring them home. Nobody will know your name. There will be no medal waiting for you, no speech from management, no newspaper article.

That is the job. It does not matter how old the design is, who it is built for, who it will fight, or what purpose it serves. Those things will change. Good engineering should not. 

Now get back to work.

Response approved for publication by Human Resources.
Respondent's final sentence reinstated after review at respondent's insistence.