To Honor You Call Us (58 page)

Emeka Moro
:  Union Space Navy Frigate,
Edward Jenner
Class, registry number FLE 2372, commissioned December 8, 2295.  Currently (as of February 20, 2315) undergoing extensive repairs and refit at James Lovell Station to repair damage sustained in battle against a Krag
Barsoom
Class Battlecruiser on 11 November 2314.  For the person, see Moro, Emeka.

Enlisted Ratings:  the ranks of enlisted men in the Union Navy are listed below, in order of increasing rank.  Within each rank, not separately listed here, are three classes—First, Second, and Third.  So, within the ranks of Able Spacer, one can rise through the ranks of Able Spacer Third Class, Able Spacer Second Class, and Able Spacer First Class.

Recruit

Ordinary

Able

Petty Officer

Chief Petty Officer.

envie
:  (Cajun French) a craving or hankering, particularly for a specific food item.  Pregnant women are famous for having an
envie
for some item that is not in the house.  Some non-French speakers find this word hard to pronounce:  the “en” has the same sound as the “aw” in “fawn” and the second syllable is pronounced “vee.” 

Epsilon Indi:  as viewed from Earth, the fifth brightest star in the Constellation Indus (the Indian).  A main sequence star, class K, orbited by two brown dwarf stars and seven planets, located approximately twelve light years from Earth.  The name is also used to refer to the third planet of this system, Epsilon Indi III (sometimes referred to as “Bravo” for the letter “B” as it was the second Earth colony outside the Sol system, coming after “Alpha” or Alpha Centauri) which is the home of the Clara Barton Military Hospital, the largest and most advanced hospital for military casualties in the Union.  The term “Indians” for residents of that world is regarded as a slur and should be avoided by persons who do not want to start a fight with one of that world’s notoriously pugnacious inhabitants.  

Esperanto:  a constructed artificial auxiliary language invented in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, designed to be an easy to learn international tongue that could be used as a medium of international communication and cooperation, thereby fostering world peace and universal human understanding.  Dream on.  It failed to achieve any of the lofty goals for which it was invented and was never widely spoken until the year 2112 when Solomon Ghift made it the primary language of the colony he founded on Gliese 581 g, which the inhabitants named Ghiftha Prima.  As of the early Twenty-fourth Century, Esperanto was still the cradle tongue of the Ghifthee.

FabriFax:  the brand name of an industrial grade computerized machine fabricator that uses advanced numeric microrobotic manufacturing techniques to construct machine parts rapidly from a set of digital specifications.  Among other advantages of this technology, having at least one FabriFax on board allows a warship to operate unsupported for longer periods of time because it does not have to carry spares for every tiny switch, gear, bracket, and fitting on board, but can manufacture them as needed.  The name is thought to be derived from the words “Fabrication” and “Factory.”  FabriFax is a brand name of Fabrikorp, GmBH.  Although the key patents on the device have expired and other companies now make microrobotic fabricators, FabriFax has become a generic name for all such devices, much in the way all phonographs were once called Victrolas and all robotic baby changing machines are known as Diaper Kwiks. 

fils de putain
: (Cajun French) Son, or sons, of a whore.  Used as an insult when an English speaker would say “son of a bitch” or “bastard.”  It is not, however, appropriate to use this expression in those places where an English speaker uses “son of a bitch” as an impersonal expletive as in, “son of a bitch, I left my wallet at home.” 

finum nuntiante: 
(Terranovan Latin) end of message, terminate communications. 

Flagship:  The ship from which a Commodore or Admiral exercises command of a Task Force, Fleet, or other group of vessels.  The Flagship of a major Task Force is typically a Command Carrier or a Fleet Carrier.  The flagship of a smaller task force may be a Battleship, a Battlecruiser, or even a Cruiser.

flamer:  a particularly scathing Report of Disciplinary Action which becomes a part of a man’s Comprehensive Disciplinary Record.

frame:  a vertical cross section of a warship, numbered from bow to stern for the purpose of describing the location of damage the ship’s structure or to large areas.  A Destroyer might have a few as eight frames, while a Carrier has hundreds.

Frigate:  a type of Warship with a slightly higher displacement range than Destroyers (Frigates typically mass between 18,000 and 26,000 metric tons; note, the largest classes of Destroyer are heavier than the smallest classes of Frigate), but usually somewhat slower and less maneuverable, more heavily armed (particularly in the matter of the number of missile tubes—most Destroyers have only two forward firing missile tubes while most Frigates have at least four and many have six or eight) and armored, and carrying a larger supply of consumables and weapons reloads to give them significantly higher endurance on station without resupply.  Frigates are most commonly used in detached service.  Frigates are typically skippered by a full Commander.

FTL:  Faster Than Light.  Superluminal.

FUBAR:  Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

genau
: (German) Exactly, precisely.  Often used to express agreement.  

General Patton’s Birthday:  A Union Holiday celebrated on the anniversary of the birth of General George S. Patton, Jr., on November 11, 1885, the former holiday of “Veteran’s Day” having been merged with “Memorial Day” sometime in the late 21
^st
Century.  The Union began in the early years of the Krag War to celebrate this holiday to commemorate and revive the “fighting spirit” of General “Blood and Guts” Patton and instill it in Union forces and the citizens of the Union at large.  Along with Admiral William Halsey, General Patton is regarded as a sort of “patron saint” of the Union forces—his aphorisms are widely quoted, his writings studied in detail, and his philosophy of leadership and military campaigns the subjects of intense study.

Greenie:  Colloquial term for a Recruit Spacer.  So called because the Working Uniform for that grade is light green in color.  

Goat:  informal name for the Chief of the Boat (see).

 Gynophage: an extremely virulent viral disease launched by the Krag against the Union in 2295.  The disease organism is highly infectious to all humans, but a gene sequence unique to the human “Y” chromosome prevents disease symptoms from manifesting in all but a tiny fraction of males thereby keeping infected males contagious but asymptomatic.  It is believed that, left to itself, the disease would have proved fatal to virtually all human females in the galaxy.  It was disseminated by thousands of stealthed compression drive drone vessels launched by the Krag in the early days of the war, each of which launched thousands of submunitions that exploded in the atmosphere of human inhabited planets.  The disease kills in a manner similar to Ebola, by breaking down the tissues of the internal organs, but operates at a much higher rate.  Once the disease begins to manifest, the subject is dead within minutes.  The disease is currently treated/prevented by the Moro Treatment, a combination vaccine and antibody devised by a team led by the brilliant Dr. Emeka Moro (see).

HASG: 
see
M-22.

Hypergolic:  of or pertaining to two substances which, when combined, will ignite and combust without need of an ignition source, a term used in the Navy primarily to describe fuels for missiles and thrusters.  Rocket motors employing hypergolic fuels are mechanically simpler and inherently more reliable than those which do not because no ignition source need be provided in the design.  On the other hand, hypergolic fuels provide a lower specific impulse (essentially the amount of thrust developed per unit of fuel and oxidizer) than cryogenic fuel/oxidizer combinations such as hydrogen/oxygen.

IFF:  Identification Friend or Foe.  A general descriptive term for any system that allows vessels to identify each other as being friendly or hostile.  Most such systems operate by the transmission of a coded signal by one vessel which is received by the other, triggering a coded response, known as “Bilateral IFF or BIFF.”  Some forces employ a system in which each vessel transmits a signal encoded in a complex manner whenever it wants to identify itself, which signal is simply recognized by other forces on the same side as being indicative of being friendly, akin to an electronic flag.  This procedure is known as “Flag IFF” or FIFF.  The Union employs both BIFF and FIFF, depending on the circumstances.  

Inertial Compensator:  the system on a space vessel that negates the inertial effect of acceleration on the crew and vessel contents (known as “G Forces”) enabling the ship to accelerate, turn, and decelerate rapidly without killing the crew and ripping the fixtures from the deck.  On most ships the inertial compensator is set to eliminate approximately 99.5% of all inertial effects so that ship motions are still apparent to the crew but are not destructive.

ja vohl
:  (German) Yes, indeed; emphatically yes.  In the Prussian and later German military services on Earth,
ja vohl
was traditionally the correct acknowledgement to an order from a superior.  The expression became less common in civilian speech after the Second World War because of its associations with Nazism, but came back into favor on many Earth colonies settled predominantly by Germans who used it, even when speaking Standard, to emphasize their cultural heritage. 

Je concours
(Cajun French):  I agree. 

JIVDCS:  Joint Intersystem Voice and Data Communication System.  The civilian interstellar communications network providing interconnectivity among the planetary communications and data networks of all human worlds, both Union and independent (except for a handful of deliberately low-tech and no-tech worlds), as well as a limited number of alien species whose space is adjacent human-occupied systems.  The primary infrastructure of the JIVDCS consists of a series of interstellar relay buoys placed approximately every 0.78 light years between nearby systems and, in each participating system, at least one Out-System Communications Relay and Exchange (OSCoRE) which receives the interstellar data stream from the nearest relay buoy, amplifies it, and ties it into the system’s internal communications network.  With properly configured accounts, at some expense, and with considerable transmission delays, a person can transmit a message from one ordinary flipcom to another more than 2,500 light years away.  Alien species consider the JIVDCS to be mankind’s greatest achievement and humanity’s most meaningful contribution to the galaxy.  That and the two human sports loved by virtually every alien race known:  synchronized swimming and curling. 

jump drive:  one of the two systems that allows a space vessel to cross interstellar distances in less time than it would take to travel at sublight speed (the other being compression drive, see).  The jump drive transfers the vessel in a single Planck Interval from one point in space, known as a jump point, to another jump point, in a nearby star system, and never less than 3.4 nor more than 12.7 light years away.  Jump points are generally located between 20 to 30 AU from a star, and almost always lie at least 45 degrees away from the star’s equator.  For some unknown reason, systems either have no jump points, three, or a multiple of three, most commonly three, usually located several dozen AU from each other.  Jumping is always more energy efficient and much faster than traversing the same distance with compression drive.  However, it is almost impossible to jump into an enemy held system, because the enemy will almost always have weapons trained and ranged on the jump points and the process of jumping requires that the jumping ship power down all sublight drives, weapons, shielding, and point defense systems, making it virtually helpless when emerging from a jump.  Accordingly, in order to take a system, it is usually necessary to send in ships from a system within ten light years or so under compression drive, and take the jump points, thereby allowing heavier ships, troop carriers, and supply vessels to jump in.

Khyber Class:  a class of Destroyer, the first of which, the U.S.S.
Khyber
, was commissioned on 24 April 2311, making these vessels a “new” class in 2315.  The Khybers are exceptionally fast and maneuverable, even for Destroyers.  The thrust to mass ratio of these ships is in the same range as those of many fighter designs; accordingly, it is said that they handle more like large fighters than escort vessels.  They are equipped with pulse cannon as powerful as those on many capital ships (although they have only three of these and a smaller rear-firing unit whereas a Capital ship might have a dozen or more).  Ships in this class are extremely stealthy, possess a sophisticated ability to mimic the electronic and drive emissions of other ships, and have a highly effective sensor suite.  They are also equipped with SWACS (see).  The trade-offs made to optimize these characteristics include highly Spartan crew accommodations—even as compared to other Destroyers—a radically reduced number of reloads for her missile tubes (20 Talons and 5 Ravens versus a typical Destroyer load out of 60 and 12), a small crew making for a heavy workload for all personnel, modest fuel capacity, and a reduced cargo hold.  Unsupported endurance is rated at 75 days (as compared to 180 days for most Destroyers) but, in practice, is somewhat shorter.  It is believed that the class was designed to make quick stealthy raids into enemy space and destroy his supply lines and means of communication, thereby disrupting his logistics and command/control/communications.  Mass:  16,200 metric tons.  Top sublight speed:  .963 c.  Compression drive:  1575 c cruise, 2120 c emergency.  Weapons:  3 forward-firing Krupp-BAE Mark XXXIV pulse cannon, 150 gigawatt rating, 1 rear firing Krupp-BAE Mark XXII pulse cannon (colloquially known at the “stinger”), 75 gigawatt rating.  Two forward and one rear firing missile tubes.  Standard missile loadout of 20 “Talon” (see) and 5 “Raven (see) anti-ship missiles.  Ships in this class are named after historically significant mountain passes and ocean straits.  Length:  97 meters; beam:  9.5 meters.  Commissioned ships in this class as of 21 January 2315 are
Khyber, Gibraltar, Messina, Cumberland, Hormuz,
and
Khardung La.
 
The projected size of the class is eighty-five ships.