[Agemegos]

A certain proportion of the fellows recruited for Marines training don't end up becoming marines. In the above I gave the figure as about 15%. I don't think it would actually need to be that many, but this figure is an effective tranquiliser for those players who balk at my suggestion that psychology, or at least neuropsychology, might one day be highly accurate in measuring dispositions and predicting broad developments. Anyway, there are certainly some. What happens to them?

A few doubtless do not develop as required under training, perhaps because of inaccuracies in assessment, perhaps because or uncontrolled influences in the training, perhaps because of chance coincidence of elements of both nature and nurture, perhaps because their prediction included a significant chance of washing out counterbalanced by a chance of making an outstanding marine, perhaps because recruits' awareness of a chance of washing out of training is an important component of the necessary environment and some poor suckers are recruited just so that a few can be seen to flunk it. These guys are either going to be offered training for other work or sent home.

Some are no doubt killed in training accidents. On one hand TL10 and medics on hand means it takes a lot to be actually lethal. On the other hand, training in vacuum. Fatalities in training in SASR have been 40 in 55 years out of an establishment of about 400, or 0.2% per year. Let's say 0.5% of intake are killed in training accidents. About three intakes out of four lose a member to a training accident. A Sector training establishment with six intakes in various schools at any time gets 4.5 fatalities per year in training accidents. And initial training is about just as dangerous as active service. That seems about right.

Perhaps three are wounded and do not return for each one killed. 1.5%. We're still only up to 2%.

Perhaps 5% develop the feeling that the pit yawns too wide and their halos fit to tightly, and resign. Perhaps as many do not satisfy the assessors and get scrubbed. Such people may be found in jobs such as spaceport and liner security, police and emergency workers in IDJ and on new worlds under Imperial interim administration, etc. That's a total of 12%. What happens to the other 3%?

Well, they just vanish during one of the periods of furlough: usually after Commando School or Integration Training, but sometimes between Drop School and the Divisional Replacement Depot. Vanish without a word, and nothing is said by the instructors. Four or five out of each intake. Very occasionally a marine will bump into one of these guys. But whereas the drop-outs and casualties fall on one's neck with glad cries of Brother! Brother! and want to spend an evening reliving the days when they were marines, these guys are polite and a bit distant, as though they were slightly embarrassed. And they always turn out to be doing something trivial, often not in the Service at all: art appraisers, security consultants, insurance claims adjusters for colonial brokerages, or journalists even. Everyone pretty much decides that this is not the sort of thing that you talk about.

3% of marines recruits. About 300 fellows per annum. Perhaps 12,000 throughout the Empire if they serve as long as marines. Excellent military aptitude. Trained as commandos and sometimes as drop troops. Either they were ring-ins from the start, recruited for something else unknown perhaps even to them, and given commando training for some other employment. Or else marines training happens to turn a few percent of marines recruits into something that someone wants for some other reason. Best not to talk about it.

Does that seem right? Or are half of Marines officers recruited out of the enlisted training program?