Senior Master Chief Dagas stepped off the lift and frowned at the clutter of tools and equipment stacked along the walls. He glanced up at wires hanging from the ceiling, and the legs of a man on a ladder, his upper body somewhere up in the ceiling. “Is that the new wiring for the navigation system?” asked Chief. The man shifted on the ladder and stretched a hand down. “Hand me those wire cutters, the ones with the blue handle.” Chief bent down and retrieved the blue handled wire cutters. He put them in the technician’s hand. “Don’t touch any of the wires, they’re live right now.” Chief ignored the lack of proper protocol and let the man continue his work. He walked to end of the hall while dodging the various wires hanging down. The on-duty Sergeant at Arms snapped to attention and in a crisp voice announced, “Senior Master Chief of the Boat.” Chief stepped over another toolbox on the floor and entered the bridge. The Captain sat at a tool cluttered table reading reports and glanced up as the Senior Chief approached. “Welcome back, Chief, your vacation didn’t work out so well.” “We saved First Landing Site, but a lot of forest was lost,” said Chief. “I want to know what took so long for the RS-71 Fire Jumpers to get there.” The Captain nodded. “You’re not the only one, there’s a formal investigation into that.” “Good, I had seven year-olds filling water buckets, dammit, and we would have lost them and several of the fourteen year-old water runner teams if it wouldn’t have been for Luca’s quick thinking.” The Captain held out a report to the Chief. “Molecular acceleration? I heard rumors.” Chief took the report. “It’s true, the Aeden’s have come a long way since we last saw them two-hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Their nano-genetic technology and internal augmentations exceed our own at this point. Those boys could be hit by a truck and they’d walk away without a scratch, and probably total the truck; every bone in their body is covered in a graphene microlattice. It took fourteen hours for the surgeons to puzzle out how Luca’s spine worked.” Chief glanced at the report the Captain had given him and sighed. “Again?” “What do you mean, again?” asked the Captain. “I broke up a fight at the campground between Jack and two Ruk boys, and Jack was winning.” “Well, apparently he likes to fight.” The Captain nodded at the report. “That report is from the first day of school. A boy called him a chipmunk. Jack gave him a black eye.” Chief handed the report back. “Jack’s a walking storm cloud, but we’re no strangers to high-spirited boys. We’re Ruks, not Sunth. However, I was going to be gentle and put Jack in the fish hatchery, but I think we should consider something more challenging.” The Captain scratched at his carefully manicured beard. “You thinking Fleet Service?” Chief shook his head. “No, he would never be satisfied standing around guarding airlocks. I’m thinking the extended long-range survey teams.” The Captain pushed himself out of the chair and walked to the large window looking out at the interior of the RS-40. Most of the massive ship was hollow and contained the Suth Sea, though there was not a drop of water left from the ancient Suth Sea of their homeworld. The water level was rising as they brought water in from the ocean outside, but it took time. The water had to be filtered and cleaned of any bacteria or potentially dangerous substances from the planet. Chief joined the Captain at his side. “Are you doing it for Jack, or to get him away from your daughter?” asked the Captain. “You heard about that, huh?” The Captain smiled. “The whole ship has heard about it.” “I have no problem with Jack and my daughter being together,” replied Chief. “If she changes her mind, then the discussion is over, but…” “Am I about to listen to another of your lectures on how we need new blood?” interrupted the Captain. “We’re dinosaurs,” said Chief. “We need genetic diversity or we will eventually exceed available resources. We’re harvesting worlds every couple thousand years now. We used to be able to last twenty-thousand years without the need to make planet fall. We need to bleed off our size or we will go the way of the dinosaurs.” The Captain lifted a pair of binoculars and zoomed in on Jack and Luca’s apartment. The boys were on their balcony and preparing to do their daily dive into the swirling sea below. “You know, the Aeden’s have Atan blood in them, they’re practically half amphibian at this point. Look” The Captain handed Chief the binoculars.” Chief lifted the binoculars to his eyes. “I didn’t know they were doing that. Do they know the sea is off limits while we’re filling it?” “I gave them permission,” said the Captain. “At first I let them go outside to swim in the ocean. They disappeared under the waves and never came up. I sent search and rescue teams to look for them. We found them twenty miles offshore doing the backstroke and happy as a fish in water. At least here I can keep an eye on them.” Chief watched as Jack and Luca performed an amazing two-hundred foot dive into the water below. “Are we certain they’re not partial-amphibian?” asked Chief. The Captain shook his head. “I asked them about it. Breeding with the Atans didn’t turn the Aedens into amphibians as some thought would happen, but it did alter their lungs to process oxygen more efficiently. You can stop watching for them to come up, they can stay under for about thirty minutes. They’re down there exploring the wave-break pylons.” Chief set the binoculars down. “They’re going to be disappointed when they discover the final sea level will be above their apartment and they won’t be able to do that again for a long time.” The Captain shrugged. “They’ll just have to satisfy themselves with watching the sea life we bring aboard from their balcony window, and going up to the public beaches after they get re-installed.” The Captain turned to the Chief. “Okay, go ahead and put Jack with the survey teams and Luca with robotics.” “Robotics?” asked Chief. “After that incident with his Teddy Bear A.I., he needed some help cleaning the interior of the device. I sent him over to Robotics to get it cleaned up. He went bonkers when he saw all the things the Robotics division is working on. I’m pretty sure we’ve found his passion.” “Did we find out who was responsible for that fiasco?” “It was Rak.” “Do you want me to take him off mail service?” “I’ve already punished him. He has ninety days extra duty and loss of one rank.” “Okay, give me a day or two to get spun up on everything, and then I’ll work on Jack and Luca. I spent the last few days with my family finishing my vacation on the north end of the island. Any special instructions for Mr. Tan?” “No, other than being unusually strong due to being from a heavy-grav world, he’s just a typical human and set in his ways. He’s happy taking care of the boys and cooking. You might want to offer him the opportunity to attend the Chef’s Academy though.” “Yes, Sir, I’ll take care of it.”