Chapter 78

Glossary For Aggy Book

'Sniffy': "In fah mous" said with a head cold.

AI: artificial intelligence; an intelligent 'puter (an oxymoron).

Bugout: rapidly depart the immediate area as either bad things are happening or are about to happen to the departee.

CI: abv for counter intelligence; efforts by us to prevent them from gathering intelligence about us.

Clean: as applied to electronic repairs' shop. Double hatch entry to restrict idle visitors. Highly filtered air.always with controlled environment, attractive to idle visitors hence double hatches.

Com: shorthand for communication; Com Officer — knock knock boy aka please speak to me; often seen with two flags tucked under arm clutching an Aldis Lamp.

Drum: received the information and got it drummed into thick skull.

EVA: extra vehicular activity; peculiar to space; never used for getting out of a ground shuttle to answer call of nature.

EW: abv for electronic warfare; using electronic means to find them; CEW counter EW — blocking their attempts to find or destroy me; CCEW — you get the idea; on large vessels crew available to handle each modality, in small vessel a one armed paper hanger working in a gale.

FTL: faster than light; Einstein got it wrong, if it is measurable then can be exceeded.

HAC: heavily armed cutter.

HMG: abv for Her / His Majesty's Government.

HMSS: His / Her Majesty's Space Station.

i/c: abv for inertial compensator; just that — compensates for inertia when moving; only boffins know how they work. Painful when fails — for a nanosecond.

Intel: abv for intelligence; information however gathered, usually about them (Carlton regards Intelligence Officer as an oxymoron.)

Lloyds: as in Lloyds of London; started as coffee shop in 17th century in London with special interest in marine insurance. Became very influential and was able to lay down structural requirements for ships at building and for reinspection and thus allocate insurance rate. Kept Lloyds register of shipping. Highest standard was A1 at Lloyds — safe ship likely to complete voyage. In 20th century diversified and spread. In 21st century had to be financially rescued. Moral of the story — stick to what you know.

LOB: living off base; depending upon where base is located can save or lose heaps.

Loc: location (hopefully known, if not refer to nav).

Nav: Navigator aka "pilot" as in marine variety. Motto of Navigation School is "Weartafukarwe". When asked usually can't be exact. It is that margin of error which is of greatest interest to enquirers. Invariably seen with compass, sextant and map (not of the space we are occupying at this time).

Navcom: an electronic instrument which receives a navigational signal and displays that result combined with a standard com (transmit and receive)WARNING known to sulk; when it does refer to nav.

NOB: an electronic signal which when received and properly comprehended can give the recipient an idea of his present location provided the location of the transmitter is known; if loc is not known refer to nav.

PDA: Personal / Pocket Data Application; all singing all dancing hand held 'puter with com capability.

R&D: research and development; an easy place to get tax write offs as usually loses much cash.

Rebro: shorthand for rebroadcast in sense of receiving electronic signal from somewhere and then transmitting the information to somewhere else. Sometime on a different frequency and perhaps further encrypted. Often fails; batteries flat, incorrect rebro freq, recipient does not have the same code.

RX: shorthand for rebroadcast transmission or rotational TX depending upon context.

Satcom: satellite with com equipment.

Sol: shorthand for Solar System; lazily used to refer to its third planet, "Earth".

Tac: abv for tactical; handles matter of the mess we are now in and how we got here; as doesn't have a clue how to get out of this mess without landing in a bigger mess, hands matter to Captain —your problem now Sir.

TX: shorthand for electronic com transmission or transmit depending upon context.