On the food/sleep thing: it's worth considering that the sorts of people who are likely to fit the adjustment profiles for Manticores (and even Spartans) are likely to already *be* the sort of "effectiveness uber alles" types for whom being able to live without food or sleep would be a good thing rather than a bad one.
After reading over your descriptions of rank position wrt Spartans, Manticores, and so on, I'd say that the most likely reaction from a rank perspective is that people would start building equivalencies in their heads - saying, for example, that a Spartan E7 was really equivalent to a CW3 (for whom a Captain would normally be about boss's boss.) The Captain, on the other side, retains the full normal level of command for personnel of that equivalency.
Also, if the Captain always wants to know what happens on his missions, and they have a good working relationship, he'd know that she'd want a report without being told, and probably report to her as soon as he docked. She, in turn, would know to expect that of him, and wouldn't bother to send a message.
"Good Morning, Ma'am. CPO Rhodes reporting in."
"Ah, Rhodes. I was wondering when you'd get here. So..."
Word choice may need to be worked around a bit (I have no real grasp of the specific characters, myself) but it lets you show not tell on their long and healthy working relationship, and it lets you show her strong interest in what he has to say without her either using the power of command excessively or letting it decay.
You could also toss in an entertaining little bit part at some point, for those of us who know rank structures, where some green officer tries to wave around power he doesn't have over this guy he thinks he outranks, and then gets verbally mangled by his boss for interfering with one of the Spartans.
As a side comment, with this level of Special Forces/Regular Navy integration, you'ld have to be giving the Specials *some* kind of significant bonus pay, to account for the fact that they're serving at an effective rank well above their technical pay grade. A Manticore E7 is just plain more valuable than a normal E7, and everyone knows it. There's that "washouts go on to become officers" thing, if you recall. Semicapitalist militaries (assuming this is still a mostly capitalist society) can tolerate rank slippage when it is contained to the point that they can recognize it and adjust apropriately, but if you aren't giving some version of roughly equal pay for roughly equal work-value, people start getting antsy.
After reading over your descriptions of rank position wrt Spartans, Manticores, and so on, I'd say that the most likely reaction from a rank perspective is that people would start building equivalencies in their heads - saying, for example, that a Spartan E7 was really equivalent to a CW3 (for whom a Captain would normally be about boss's boss.) The Captain, on the other side, retains the full normal level of command for personnel of that equivalency.
Also, if the Captain always wants to know what happens on his missions, and they have a good working relationship, he'd know that she'd want a report without being told, and probably report to her as soon as he docked. She, in turn, would know to expect that of him, and wouldn't bother to send a message.
"Good Morning, Ma'am. CPO Rhodes reporting in."
"Ah, Rhodes. I was wondering when you'd get here. So..."
Word choice may need to be worked around a bit (I have no real grasp of the specific characters, myself) but it lets you show not tell on their long and healthy working relationship, and it lets you show her strong interest in what he has to say without her either using the power of command excessively or letting it decay.
You could also toss in an entertaining little bit part at some point, for those of us who know rank structures, where some green officer tries to wave around power he doesn't have over this guy he thinks he outranks, and then gets verbally mangled by his boss for interfering with one of the Spartans.
As a side comment, with this level of Special Forces/Regular Navy integration, you'ld have to be giving the Specials *some* kind of significant bonus pay, to account for the fact that they're serving at an effective rank well above their technical pay grade. A Manticore E7 is just plain more valuable than a normal E7, and everyone knows it. There's that "washouts go on to become officers" thing, if you recall. Semicapitalist militaries (assuming this is still a mostly capitalist society) can tolerate rank slippage when it is contained to the point that they can recognize it and adjust apropriately, but if you aren't giving some version of roughly equal pay for roughly equal work-value, people start getting antsy.