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Posted by: RKOSNAKE
Posted by: UphillMercury
Posted by: RKOSNAKE
"We have identified 375 candidates," Kurt said. "Slightly less than we started with for Alpha Company, but we have learned from our mistakes. We will be able to graduate a much higher percentage this time." He nodded toward Mendez to give the Chief the credit he richly deserved. Mendez sat completely still and Kurt saw he wore his poker face. Every instinct Kurt had screamed that something was wrong here.
"But," the Rear Admiral said, "that's nowhere near the one thousand projection for the second wave." A brief scowl played over Ackerson's lip. "No, sir."
The Vice Admiral set her hands flat on the table and leaned closer to Kurt. "What if we loosen the new genetic selection criteria?" Kurt took note of the "we" in her question. There was a subtle shift in the power structure at the table. With a single word, the Vice Admiral had made Kurt a part of their group. "Our new bioaugmentation protocols target a very specific genetic set. Any deviation from that set would geometrically increase the failure rate," Kurt said. The thought of dozens of Spartans being tortured and ultimately crippled as they lay helpless in a medical bay filled him with revulsion. He managed to contain the feeling.
The Vice Admiral raised one threadbare brow. "You've done your homework. Lieutenant." "However, as our augmentation technology improves," Ackerson said, "one day we will
be able to expand the selection parameters, maybe to include the entire general population."
"But not today, Colonel," the Rear Admiral said, and sighed. "So we're back to about three hundred SPARTAN-IIIs. That will have to do then."
No screening eh?
That's very nice, but what is your source?
Ghosts of Onyx, Margaret Paragonski, Kurt, Mendez and two other admirals-vice admirals talking about the Spartan III program. Also, Halsey about genes.
Number 117 had all the genetic markers she had flagged in her original study, he was as close to a perfect subject for her purposes as science could determine. But Dr. Halsey knew it would take more than theoretical perfection to make this project work. People were more than the sum of their genes.
There were environmental factors, mutations, learned ethics, and a hundred other factors that could make this candidate unacceptable.
The Fall of Reach, Halsey inspecting John's profile before arriving to the playground to see him.
Even she acknowledges that genes aren't everything.
doesn't change the fact that the only reason she was even looking at him was because of his genes. She means by that quote, that though they may have the REQUIRED genes, emphasis on REQUIRED, they could have had a horrible up-brining, or were in an accident that crippled them. Environmental factors do apply, but ultimately it was the S-IIs genes that was why Halsey was looking at them.