The deep freeze that had nearly claimed the telegraph line was only the vanguard of a much larger crisis. By mid-January, the "Winter Stagnation" had settled over the Northern Range with a suffocating weight. The Grand Western Canal, though designed for movement, was beginning to choke on shelf-ice, and the supply lines from the south were frozen solid. In Oakhaven-West, the victory of the wheat harvest felt like a distant memory as the settlement's population—swelled by thousands of industrial laborers—faced a terrifying reality: they had plenty of iron, but they were running out of fresh food.
Deacon stood in the center of the town square, watching the daily distribution of "Hard-Tack," the dry, tooth-cracking biscuit that had become the staple of the worker's diet. Scurvy and malnutrition were no longer theoretical threats; they were appearing in the infirmary logs.
"The men are sluggish, David," Julian said, his coat buttoned to his chin. "You can't run a high-precision lathe on an empty stomach. If we don't find a source of greens and fresh starch, the foundry production will drop by half before the spring thaw."
"We can't wait for the thaw," Deacon replied. He looked toward the high-pressure steam vents of the geothermal station, where plumes of white vapor roared into the frigid sky, wasted energy dissipating into the atmosphere. "We're sitting on the largest heat source in the province. We're going to stop heating the sky and start heating the earth."
Deacon's plan was to build the Oakhaven Glass-House, a structure that would combine his knowledge of 19th-century horticulture with geothermal engineering. But the "gritty realism" of the project was immediately apparent: they didn't have enough high-quality glass. The local glassworks produced small, bubbly panes for windows, but a structure meant to house an acre of crops required thousands of square feet of consistent, light-permeable material.
"We have to switch to Cylinder Glass," Deacon told the master glassblowers. "We blow the glass into long, hollow tubes, split them while they're hot, and flatten them into sheets. It's the only way to get the scale we need."
The construction was a desperate, around-the-clock labor. While the glassblowers worked in the searing heat of the kilns, the engineering crews laid a network of perforated iron pipes beneath a massive timber-and-iron frame. This was the Subterranean Radiator. Instead of heating the air, which would quickly escape through the inevitable leaks in the glass, Deacon intended to heat the soil itself to a constant 20°C using the "Deep-Pulse" steam.
"The condensation is going to be our enemy," Miller warned as the first panes were slotted into the iron putty. "With the heat from below and the frost outside, the glass will be permanently opaque with ice. The plants will starve for light."
"We'll use a Double-Glazed Air Gap," Deacon said, sketching the cross-section in the frost on a nearby workbench. "Two panes of glass with an inch of dead air between them. It's an insulator. It'll keep the inner pane warm enough to prevent the ice from forming."
The "Glass-House" became a beacon in the winter dark. When the first geothermal valves were opened, the snow around the structure melted instantly, revealing the dark, rich Oakhaven loam beneath. Deacon didn't plant wheat; he planted fast-growing kale, tubers, and vitamin-rich radishes.
The interior of the Glass-House was an alien world. Outside, the wind howled at -20°C; inside, the air was humid, smelling of damp earth and life. The "Logistical Insight" allowed Deacon to optimize the nutrient-mix, using a primitive form of Hydroponics where the water was enriched with fish-waste from the canal and mineral-salts from the mines.
By the third week, the first harvest of greens was delivered to the worker's mess hall. The effect on morale was instantaneous. It wasn't just the vitamins; it was the psychological victory of seeing something green in the heart of a white wasteland.
However, the success drew a new kind of scrutiny. A "Spiritual Auditor" from the High Church, a man named Father Silas, arrived on a supply sledge. He didn't look at the engineering; he looked at the "unnatural" growth.
"You are forcing the seasons, Lord Cassian," Silas said, standing in the humid warmth of the Glass-House, his heavy wool robes looking absurd among the sprouting kale. "The winter is a time of rest ordained by the Heavens. To create a summer in the womb of the ice... it is a defiance of the penance we owe for the Era of Ash."
"If the Heavens wanted us to rest, they wouldn't have given us the sense to stay warm," Deacon replied, his voice echoing in the glass vault. "Is it a sin to keep a child from losing his teeth to scurvy, Father? Or is the penance only for the people who can't afford your imported Southern fruit?"
Silas narrowed his eyes, his hand tracing the warm iron pipes. "The Silver Circle calls this 'Bio-Alchemy.' The Church calls it 'Temporal Theft.' You are stealing time from the future to feed the present. Be careful, Northerner. When the bill for this 'summer' comes due, it won't be paid in coin."
Deacon ignored the warning. He knew the bill was already being paid—in the sweat of the glassblowers and the constant, grueling maintenance of the steam-seals. But as he looked at his workers, their strength returning, he realized that the Glass-House was more than a farm. It was the final proof that Oakhaven was no longer a subject of the Empire's environment. They were masters of it.
"The winter hasn't broken yet," Deacon told Miller as they watched the sun set through the humid glass. "But we've proven that the mountain can't starve us out. Now, we just have to make sure the Church doesn't try to burn the garden to save our souls."