To Honor You Call Us (61 page)

TF:  Task Force.  A group of warships assembled for a particular mission or “task.”  Distinguished from a “fleet” in that a fleet is a permanent or very long-lived formation usually assigned to a particular system or region of space while a task force is assembled for a limited period of time then disbanded.  Task forces are generally designated by letters of the alphabet, e.g. Task Force TD or Tango Delta.  Units may be spun off from a task force; these are usually designated by the name of the task force followed by a color or a number.  E.g., Task Force Bravo Victor Seven or Task Force Galaxy Foxtrot Green. 

Type:  When applied to warships, this term refers to the general category and function of the vessel, as opposed to Class which refers to a specific design or production run of vessels within a type.  The most common Types of warship are, in decreasing order of size, Carrier, Battleship, Battlecruiser, Cruiser, Frigate, Destroyer, Corvette, and Patrol Vessel.  There are of course, other Types of naval vessel that are not categorized as warships, including Tanker, Tender, Tug, Hospital Ship, Troop Carrier, Landing Ship, Cargo Vessel, etc.

U.E.S.F.:  United Earth Space Forces.  The international military arm formed in 2034 by United States and Canada, the European Union, and the China/Japan Alliance to retake the Earth’s moon from the Ning-Braha who had occupied it, presumably as a prelude to a planned invasion of Earth.  The U.E.S.F. drew its personnel primarily from the navies and air forces of the founding powers and drew its command structure, regulations, traditions, and other institutional foundations mainly from their “Salt Water Navies.”  The Ning-Braha technology captured by the U.E.S.F. in this campaign was the catalyst for mankind’s colonization of the stars.

Union: 
see
Terran Union.

Union Forces Voicecom Alphabet (or UFVA):  because letters of the alphabet as normally spoken can be easily confused over the voice channels (for example, “B and “D” sound very much alike), military and police forces have long used standardized sets of words to stand for the letters of the alphabet with which the words begin.  The UFVA is used universally by all Union Naval, System Guard, Marine, and other forces, as well as by civilian space vessels and Space Traffic Controllers in Union Space and by most non-Union human worlds.  The UFVA is derived, in turn, from the alphabetic system introduced by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Earth in the 1950’s.  Only a few letters have been changed:  Golf to Galaxy (the game of golf having become extinct centuries ago), November to Nebula (the month being associated with some of the bloodiest and least decisive battles of the First Interstellar War), Quebec to Quarter (the official pronunciation, “kay beck” leading many civilian operators to believe that the designator stood for “K” rather than “Q”), and Yankee to Yardarm (the association of “Yankee” with the United States of America was deemed to be in appropriate in an alphabet used on an interplanetary basis).  The Alphabet is as follows:

Alfa (not “Alpha” because some will mispronounce the “ph”)

Bravo

Charlie

Delta

Echo

Foxtrot

Galaxy

Hotel

India

Juliett

Kilo (pronounced “kee low”)

Lima (pronounced “lee ma”)

Mike

Nebula

Oscar

Papa

Quarter

Sierra

Tango

Uniform

Victor

Whisky

Ray

Yardarm

Zulu

UNREP:  UNderway REPlenishment.  The refueling or resupply of a ship from a tanker or tender while both ships are underway, thereby saving the time and fuel involved in bringing both ships to a stop and then reaccelerating them. 

USNGS (Uniform Sierra Nebula Galaxy Sierra):  Union Space Navy Galactic Survey.  The most important star catalog in Known Space—used universally by the Union Space Navy, as well as by the Union Merchant Naval Service, most human navigators even outside of the Union, and many alien species.  Most star systems more than a few hundred light years from Earth are identified mainly by a USNGS catalog ID and, in some cases, by a Local Proper Name (such as Markab B).  The USNGS catalog number consists of a one digit number and four groups of four digits, all separated by dashes.  The one digit number designates which survey is being used—each new survey entirely supersedes the preceding survey, so the number is given mainly for record purposes so that later users of logs and recordings will know which survey was in use at the time.  As of 2315, the Fourth Survey was in use.  The first three digit group designates which of the 10,000 Sectors in the galaxy the star is located (in 2315, stars were cataloged in only 3972 Sectors and, of those, only 2017 were surveyed with anything approaching completeness), the second group designates the Subsector (10,000 per sector), the third the Section (10,000 Sections per subsector), and the fourth the number of the star in the Section beginning with the North, Spinward, Coreward corner (sections are small enough that none has yet been found to have more than 9140 stars—if one is ever cataloged with more than ten thousand stars, then an additional digit will be assigned).  Accordingly, a catalog number would be in this form:  USNGS 4-1153-0158-9899-5648 (the USNGS is often omitted).  Some astrocartographers have asserted that the current catalog designations are unnecessarily cumbersome and that stars should be identified by their galactic coordinates, which would allow each star to be designated by three numbers, each consisting of seven digits.  This proposal has not won favor, mostly because the very high proper motion of some stars would require constant revision of their designation as they move through the galaxy.  Most agencies that use these designations, particularly the Union Postal Service, believe strongly that a system’s “name” should not change every five to ten years.  Another disadvantage of naming stars by coordinates alone is that, in the case of some close binaries, two stars would have the same or almost the same coordinates, unless a decimal point and at least one additional digit were to be inserted in at least one of the coordinates.  See also note on Star and Planet Names.

Watch:  The period of time that a member of the crew who is designated as a “watch stander” mans his assigned “watch station.”  Also, the designation of the section of the crew to which the watch stander belongs.  On Union Warships, there are three watches, usually known as Blue, Gold, and White.  They stand watch on the following schedule:

First Watch--2000-0000  (1 Blue)  (2 Gold)  (3 White)

Middle Watch--0000-0400  (1 Gold)  (2 White)  (3 Blue)

Morning Watch--0400-0800  (1 White)  (2 Blue  (3 Gold)

Forenoon Watch--0800-1200  (1 Blue)  (2 Gold)  (3 White)

Afternoon Watch--1200-1600  (1 Gold)  (2 White)  (3 Blue)

First Dog Watch--1600-1800  (1 White)  (2 Blue)  (3 Gold)

Second Dog Watch--1800-2000  (1Blue)  (2 Gold)  (3 White)

The Captain and the XO do not stand a watch.  Rather, all officers other than the CO, XO, and the CMO serve as “Officer of the Deck,” serving as the officer in charge of minute to minute operations in CIC when neither the CO nor the XO is in CIC.  Officers of the Deck stand watch for eight hour shifts on a rotating basis. 

XO:  Executive Officer.  The second in command of any Warship.  On most ships, the XO actually commands the ship through most routine operations and maneuvers, leaving the Captain time to work up battle plans, devise training operations, respond to communications from higher authority, and other high level matters.  If the ship is boarded by an enemy, traditionally, the XO commands the Marines and members of the crew tasked with repelling boarders while the CO “fights the ship.”  One of the primary responsibilities of the CO is to train the XO to be ready to replace him at any time should the CO be incapacitated or promoted to a higher command, or to assume command of another vessel on his own promotion.  Accordingly, in many ways, the XO may be viewed as an “apprentice CO.”   

Z:  (when appended to a time notation) Zulu time.  Standard Union Coordinated Time.  So that all USN Vessels can conduct coordinated operations, they all operate on Zulu Time, which is, for all intents and purposes, the same as Greenwich Mean Time—mean solar time as measured from the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England, on Earth in the Sol System.  When any other time system is used in any naval communication (such as the Standard time of a planet on which operations are taking place or local time at some place on a planet), that fact is specifically noted.  Clocks on Union warships are linked to the ships’ Velocity Register so that they account correctly for any time dilation caused by travel at relativistic speeds.  Significant correction is rarely needed, however, because—even though many Union warships are capable of velocities in excess of .95 c—they rarely attain these speeds because of the tactical disadvantages imposed upon a ship experiencing time dilation in comparison to other vessels that are not. 

Zhou Matrix:  a standard fleet static defensive formation in which ships are arrayed in a plane perpendicular to the threat axis with more powerful ships interspersed with less powerful ones to provide mutual fire support and to avoid giving the enemy a “weak zone” to exploit.  Named for Rear Admiral Zhou Chou Dong who first proposed it in a lecture on hypothetical future space combat tactics in the former People’s Republic of China in 2022.    The Zhou Matrix can also be used offensively as the “anvil” portion of the “Hammer and Anvil” formation invented by Admiral Kathleen “Killer Kate” Phillips” at the Battle of Sirius B on August 22, 2164.

• Prologue
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Epilogue
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• Glossary