The Cinder Union
A frontier is only as strong as the next working connection.
“Keep the lights on. Then talk.”
Built from the night shift
The Union formed when the old power company stopped answering calls but its engineers kept turning up. Crews took responsibility for stretches of line, then stations, then the whole broken grid. Authority still follows the repair: whoever understands the fault leads until the lights return.
Their kind of wealth
A warehouse of compatible parts matters more to the Union than a polished vault. They trade energy allocations for metal, cooling water and verified schematics. Members wear a small silver conductor on their work jackets, retired from a line they personally restored.
The reserve argument
The Union once dismissed the Hearthbound’s stacks as idle weight. Then a damaged substation cut the Basin off from its own accounts. Silver from the emergency store paid outside crews for eleven days. The Union now maintains a reserve, although no dispatcher agrees on how large it should be.