To Honor You Call Us (Man of War)

by Honsinger, H. Paul

  Ça c’est bon (Cajun French) That’s good. Equivalent to c’est bon in Parisian French.

  Cajun A person descended from the French-speaking Roman Catholic residents of Nova Scotia (which they called Acadia) who were exiled by the British at the end of the French and Indian War because of concerns regarding their loyalty to the British crown and who settled in what was then the French Territory of Louisiana. Most Cajuns spoke their own version of French well into the twentieth century and maintain a distinctive culture to this day.

  C’est pas rien (Cajun French) It’s nothing, think nothing of it. Equivalent to de rien in Parisian French.

  CDR Comprehensive disciplinary record. A complete compendium of all disciplinary actions of any kind taken with respect to a particular naval personnel.

  Cherenkov-Heaviside radiation The burst of radiation emitted as an object emerges from a jump (see jump drive).

  Chief of the Boat The senior noncommissioned officer on board any naval vessel. He is considered a department head and is the liaison between the captain and the noncommissioned ranks Sometimes referred to as COB (pronounced “cobb”) and informally known as the “Goat.”

  CIC Combat Information Center.

  CIG Change in grade. Promotion or demotion.

  class A production series of warships of highly similar or identical design, designated by the name of the first ship of the series.

  class (Krag vessels) The Krag apparently have a class system similar to the Union’s, producing warships of similar design in series. Because Krag vessel names are, however, unknown, difficult to pronounce, or impossible to remember, the Navy uses a system of “reporting names” for Krag vessel classes. Essentially, when a new class of Krag vessel is identified, a name is assigned to that class by Naval Intelligence. Class names generally start with the same letter or group of letters as the name of the vessel type, with the exception of battlecruisers, the class names of which begin with “Bar” to distinguish them from battleships. In this way, a ship’s type can immediately be determined from its class name, even if the name is not familiar. Examples of class names for each major warship type follow:

  Battleships: Batwing, Battalion, Battleax, Baton.

  Battlecruisers: Barnacle, Barnyard, Barrister, Barsoom, Barmaid

  Carriers: Carousel, Carnivore, Carpetbagger, Cardigan

  Cruisers: Crusader, Crucible, Crustacean, Crumpet

  Frigates: Freelancer, Frogleg, Frycook, Frigid

  Destroyers: Deckhand, Delver, Dervish, Debris

  Corvettes: Corpuscle, Cormorant, Cornhusker, Corsican, Cordwood

  clear the datum As a “datum” or “datum point” is a location from which a vessel has been observed, to “clear the datum” is for a ship to move away from a point in space where it (1) has been observed or (2) it did something that might have allowed it to be observed.

  Comet Colloquial term for the Warship Qualification Badge, a medal—shaped like a comet with a curved tail—indicating that the wearer has passed either a Warship Crew Qualification Examination or a Warship Officer Qualification Examination, showing that he can competently operate every crew or officer station on the ship, perform basic damage control, engage in close order battle with sidearm and boarding cutlass, use a pulse rifle, and fight hand to hand.

  compression drive One of the two known technologies that allow ships to travel faster than lightspeed (the other being the jump drive). The compression drive permits violation of Einsteinian physics by selectively compressing and expanding the fabric of the space-time continuum. The drive creates around the vessel a bubble of distorted space-time with a diameter approximately thirty-four times the length of the ship. This bubble, in turn, contains a smaller bubble of undistorted space-time just large enough to enclose the ship itself. The density of space-time is compressed along the ship’s planned line of travel and expanded behind it (hence the term “compression drive,” which was thought to sound better than “expansion drive” or “warp drive”), creating a propulsive force that moves the ship forward faster than the speed of light as viewed from the perspective of a distant observer. This superluminal motion does not violate Einsteinian physics because the ship is stationary relative to the fabric of space-time inside the bubble and therefore, from the point of view of an observer located there, does not exceed the speed of light. Because the volume of distorted space rises as a geometric function as ship size goes up under the familiar V = πr2 formula multiplied by thirty-four (pi times half the length of the ship squared times thirty-four), even a small increase in the ship’s dimensions results in substantial increases in the energy required to propel it through compressed space. Accordingly, only smaller ship types can move at high speeds or for any appreciable distance using compression drive, which means, in turn, that major fleet operations and planetary conquests require the taking and holding of jump points so that carriers, battleships, tankers, and other larger or slower vessels can be brought into the system.

  compression shear A dangerous phenomenon caused by a compression drive experiencing poor speed regulation, a common occurrence at speeds of less than about 80 c. Compression shear occurs when radical fluctuations in the degree of space–time distortion caused by a poorly regulated drive exert variable and rapidly fluctuating force against the “bubble” of normal space-time surrounding the ship. As the small undistorted bubble around the ship must exist in precise equilibrium with the larger zone of differentially compressed and expanded space that surrounds the smaller one, sharp variations, or “shear,” along the boundary rupture the bubble and destroy the ship.

  Core Systems The fifty star systems located near the astrographic center of the Union, which, although constituting only about 10 percent by number of the Union’s inhabited worlds, are home to 42 percent of its population and 67 percent of its heavy industrial capacity.

  DC Damage control.

  Egg Scrambler A device fired from a missile tube that, when exploded, scrambles the interface between normal space and metaspace such that for nearly an hour it is impossible for a ship in the vicinity to operate its compression drive (see) or to cause a comm signal to cross the interface to allow faster than light communications.

  EM Electromagnetic. Usually short for the term “electromagnetic radiation,” meaning visible light, radio waves, ultraviolet, infrared, and similar forms of energy forming a part of the familiar electromagnetic spectrum.

  EMCON Emissions Control. A security and deception measure in which a warship not only operates under what twenty-first century readers would call “radio silence” but also without navigation beacons, active sensor beams, or any other emissions that could be used to track the ship.

  Epsilon Indi III The second planet colonized by humans outside of the Sol system, also known as Bravo. A major industrial and cultural center.

  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—the distant descendant of the three-dimensional printers of the twenty-first century.

  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.

  flamer A particularly scathing Report of Disciplinary Action that 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 as few as eight frames, whereas a carrier has hundreds.

  FTL Faster than light. Superluminal.

  FUBAR Fucked up beyond all recognition.
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  genau (German) Exactly, precisely. Often used to express agreement.

  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 or 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 that, 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.

  IFF Identification, friend or foe.

  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.

  jawohl (German) “Yes, indeed”; emphatically yes.

  je concours (Cajun French) “I agree.”

  jump drive One of the two systems that allow 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 or 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—but 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.

  Khyber class A class of destroyer, the first of which, the USS 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 (twenty Talons and five Ravens versus a typical destroyer loadout of sixty and twelve); 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 supply lines and means of communication, thereby disrupting enemy logistics and command/control/communications. Mass: 16,200 metric tons. Top sublight speed: .963 c. Compression drive: 1575 c cruise, 2120 c emergency. Weapons: three forward-firing Krupp-BAE Mark XXXIV pulse cannon, 150-gigawatt rating, one rear-firing Krupp-BAE Mark XXII pulse cannon (colloquially known as the “stinger”), 75-gigawatt rating. Two forward and one rear-firing missile tubes. Standard missile loadout of twenty Talon (see) and five Raven (see) antiship missiles. Ships in this class are named after historically significant mountain passes and ocean straits. Length: ninety-seven meters; beam: nine and a half 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.

  kill Military slang for “kilometer.” Replaced the former term “klick” beginning in the 2150s, when humans encountered and fought a brief war against a race of aliens known as the “Khlihk,” at which point the similarity in pronunciation between the two words became confusing, as it was sometimes ambiguous whether “fifty klicks” was a distance or a moderate body of enemy troops.

  Kuiper belt (rhymes with “piper”) A belt of bodies, made mainly of frozen volatiles such as water ice, methane, and ammonia, found in the outer regions of many star systems.

  lentement (Cajun French) Slowly.

  LumaTite® A registered trade mark of APG-Owens-Corning Corporation for its transparent armored viewport material for spacecraft, consisting of a titanium-silicon nanocrystalline matrix microlaminated with frequency-specific EM-rejecting polymer films. The resulting material is as durable as warship hull material and is opaque to all forms of EM except visible light. It is, however, more expensive, kilogram for kilogram, than gold.

  M-22 (Model 2222) Also known as the HASG (pronounced “haz-gee”), the Naval-Military Systems, Inc., heavy automatic shotgun is an “eight-gauge,” belt-fed, swivel-mounted, fully automatic shotgun designed specifically to repel enemy boarders at the close ranges and in the confined spaces found on board a warship.

  M-62 Model 2162 Pistol. One of the two sidearms approved for use by Union Space Navy Personnel (the other being the M-1911), the M-62 is a ten-millimeter, semiautomatic, magazine-fed handgun with a fourteen-round magazine. It is manufactured by the Beretta-Browning Military Arms Corporation.

  M-72 Model 2072 Close-Order Battle Shotgun. The Winchester-Mossberg Arms Company Model 2072 is a semiautomatic, twelve-gauge shotgun designed for close-order battle against boarding parties or for use by boarders.

  M-88 Model 2288 Pulse Rifle. The Colt-Ruger Naval Arms Corporation Model 2288 is a 7.62 × 51 millimeter, select-fire, magazine-fed battle rifle issued to Navy personnel for boarding actions, ship defense, and ground combat. It is similar in form and function to the M-14 battle rifle issued by the United States of America in the mid-twentieth century. It is called a “pulse rifle” because coaxially mounted below the rifle barrel is a launcher, from which can be fired the MMD (“Make my day”) pulse grenade, a thirty-five-millimeter, self-propelled short-range projectile containing a shaped charge–equipped pulse slug capable of penetrating the armor on a Krag fighting suit at a range of fifty meters and then exploding, killing the occupant. The MMD is also effective against lightly armored ground vehicles.

  M-1911 Model 1911 Pistol. One of the two sidearms approved for use by Union Space Navy Personnel (the other being the M-62), the M-1911 is an 11.48 millimeter (sometimes referred to by the archaic designation “.45 caliber”) semiautomatic, magazine-fed handgun invented by perhaps the most brilliant firearms designer in the Known Galaxy, John Moses Browning, who was active in the United States of America on Earth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  mais (Cajun French) Literally, “but.” Often used to intensify or to give emphasis to the expression that follows. Accordingly, “mais yeah,” is an enthusiastic or emphatic “yeah.”

  midshipman A boy, between the ages of eight and seventeen, taken on board
ship both to perform certain limited duties and to be trained to serve in the enlisted or officer ranks. Midshipmen are commonly referred to as “mids.”

  midshipman trainer A senior noncommissioned officer, typically the second most senior chief petty officer on the ship, in charge of the training, housing, discipline, and welfare of all midshipmen on board. A well-liked midshipman trainer is generally known by the nickname “Mother Goose.”

  MMD See M-88.

  moi aussi (Cajun) French for “me too.”

  Moro, Emeka Physician and medical researcher born in Mombassa, Kenya, Earth, on 28 March 2241. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2295. Perhaps the foremost expert in human infectious diseases in the galaxy, Dr. Moro headed the effort to devise a treatment or preventative for the Gynophage (see), an effort that involved more than a million physicians and researchers on more than four hundred planets, at its peak consuming 43 percent of the interstellar communications bandwidth and 15 percent of the computing capacity available to the human race, and costing more than 300 trillion credits. When early research work began to indicate that neither a vaccine nor an antibody-based treatment would be more than 25 percent effective, it was Dr. Moro who personally had the insight to combine a vaccine with a set of broad-spectrum antibodies synthesized not only to match the current disease organism but also the nine most probable mutation-induced alternate phenotypes of its external protein coat, thereby creating a combination inoculation that prevents infection in those who are not infected and prevents manifestation of the disease in those who are infected but asymptomatic. It is believed that the vaccine also provides some protection to asymptomatic individuals above and beyond that provided by the antibodies alone. (For the ship, see Emeka Moro. The USS Emeka Moro, an Edward Jenner class frigate commissioned on December 8, 2295, is named after Dr. Moro.)

  Mother Goose The semiofficial title for the midshipman trainer (see).

  officer rank abbreviations:

  GADM: Grand Admiral (five stars)