Gurjan heard the commander call everyone to the common room. His bag was still half unpacked, so he just picked it up wholesale and stuffed it in one of his bed's closets. He would finish it later, preferably while the ship wasn't transitioning to sub-light travel.  He buckled himself in one of the seats and silently awaited permission to move about again. There was the usual feeling of displacement as the ship's artificial gravity adjusted itself. It always made his insides tingle just enough to be noticeable, but not uncomfortable. Or, to put it another way, strangely relaxing.

The tour of the rest of the ship was short and to the point, just the way he liked things. Everything had its own assigned color... Everyone knew where to go. He found it quite exemplary how well the ship operated even while a hundred people were walking to a hunred and one different places to get a hundred and two things mission-ready. Yes, he quite liked this streamlined efficiency... It helped him feel in control.

And then they came upon the marvels of modern technology that they would be flying. Even laid bare and with engineers crawling through its insides, the sabre figthers had a certain stoic elegance to them. He made his way to his own assigned fighter, his engineering crew hard at work creating order from the chaos of loose parts strewn about... Well, they weren't really strewn about randomly. Gurjan knew enough about starship engineering to see there was some system behind the arrangement, but he hadn't ever been able to figure out the reasoning behind it for the life of him. These weren't just the simple tools he had grown up around either. The figther contained a thousand parts... and  a single one of them fitted the wrong way could result in a deployment ending in a blazing fireball before the hangar was even cleared. Hopefully, these people were competent enough to not let that happen.

“Alright, which of you is in charge here?” Gurjan asked curtly. The crew looked up from their work, were silent for a moment, and simply got back to work. All except for an Ellori holding a checklist. Gurjan took a moment to gauge the man. Grease stains and  calloused hands... He wasn't afraid to do dirty work personally... Steady and confident expression... He seemed to know what he was doing. Not a single hint of bitterness from his subordinates... This man had been heading this crew for longer than today.

“Pilot Wallon, good to see you arrived safely” The Ellori held up a hand “ Chief engineer Ferron, at your service” Gurjan looked at the open hand, hesitated for just a short moment, and shook the engineer's hand. “Yes, we ran into some red tape on the way... Haven't even had the chance to unpack my bag yet... Or sleep for that matter.” He glanced at the figther to their side. “Well then, shall we get to calibrating?” He made his way into the craft's cockpit and wormed his way into the seat with some difficulty. It seemed the seat's legroom would be the first thing to be adjusted.

As it turned out, calibrating an aircraft was a protracted and dull exercise. First came the things that made sense immediately, like adjusting the cockpit's seat and making sure all the ship's controls were mapped out correctly. Then came the somewhat dull but nevertheless necusarry things, like test-firing the engines and checking every system and subsystem, as well as the things only an engineer would think of doing, like running a full system diagnostic on the off chance there was a software error somewhere. By the end of it, Gurjan felt as tired as he normally was after an actual flight. He also felt a newfound respect for the engineers diligence. He unbuckled from his figther, climbed out, and leaned against its side to see what the rest were doing.