Chapter 2, Engineerium
The plasma drive of even a small starship produces and channels more energy in the span of a journey than some civilisations ever master and apply and the Pious Lament is no small vessel, no mere system-monitor or patrol boat. She is a pinnacle of the shipwrights are, millennia old and hallowed beyond words, filled from spine to keel with ancient technology and hallowed to the singular purpose of crossing the great spaces between stars in the service of Mankind and the Omnissiah.
Igniting those drives is a task both holy and profound.
For the last fifteen hours, teams of tech-adepts and servitors have scoured and scanned countless miles of primary plasma conduits and performed test-canticles over ten times ten thousand magnetic containment modules.
Five great motive prayer-cycles have been performed, the call-and-response at the peak of each three-hour cycle permitting the divination of which of the thousands of machine-spirits involved in the activation of the drive most needs solace and attention - the placating of one often unveiling the needs of a dozen more with the next cycle.
Three dozen sweating, chanting men and women encased in protective suits have walked through the cores of a dozen great initiator-chambers whose powerful sparks will light the blessed artificial suns of the fusion reactors, there to manhandle the great blocks of dense metal into their places and lower them into their sarcophagi of water and carbon - burning their lifespans in willing sacrifice to the great machine, for none but the holiest adept may walk their path more than once in their life.
The motive force their labour generates grows and sings through vast cables of braided superconductor and into the enormous sphere of the blessed Engine-shrine itself.
At the peak of the sixteenth hour, to the massed song of ten thousand laymen and engineseers that fills the precisely-mapped space with overlapping waves of piety and sound Explorator Teslas voice rings from a thousand voxes, tuned with piety and perfection to meld with the prayers, every machine-spirit and vox speaker shouting in unison with the hands that perform His work "The Beginning and the End are in your hands, O blessed Omnissiah! In our hands you have placed the power of the suns! We, who having been tested have your gift of both creative and destructive power by your will, turn to you in sober fear and intoxicating hope. We ask for your guidance and your blessing in this use of nuclear force. Help us to light the spark of atomic brightness that illuminates the fog of darkness between the stars, so that all eyes may see by your pure light. Bless all of us who work today in your Presence and who dedicate ourselves to achieve your intended purpose and rightful understanding. In the Name of all that is holy and all that is understood. Amen!"
With the great 'Amen', he presses the sacred initiator switch and in the depths of the Enginarium, a new sun is born.