Hero (29 page)

freak:
A radio frequency, either actual or (typically) virtual.

French brevet:
A fictitious promotion.

friendly fire:
Fire from supposedly friendly forces. Every bit as deadly as enemy fire. Bat Masterson once killed his deputy, quite by accident—and he wasn't the only one to have done it. "Friendly fire isn't."

Fundamentale:
The Casalingpaesesercito basic training course.

G1, or adjutant:
The personnel officer or department of a brigade or larger military unit.

G2:
The intelligence officer or department of a brigade or larger military unit.

G3:
The operations and training officer or department of a brigade or larger military unit.

G4:
The logistics and supply officer or department of a military unit larger than a brigade. Probably the single most unappreciated specialty.

garrison:
Opposite of "field." Garrison duty is that done out of fixed and more or less permanent positions, such as military bases or airfields.

general:
The sole general officer rank in the MMC; a general is the only officer authorized to run an offworld contract. Insignia is a single star.

groceries:
Colloquial for supplies.

green light:
Authorization and direction to shoot someone or something, immediately. "You've got a green light on that asshole" means "Please shoot that person right now."

helo:
Rotary wing aircraft; a helicopter.

herrenvolk:
German for "master race." An archaic, sarcastic and unaffectionate term for humans of German descent.

integral:
Part of, as opposed to attached. Mechanized infantry have trucks as an integral part of their organization, but would attach armor if they needed some.

khaki:
l. A dull, yellowish brown color.
2. Any Metzadan uniform other than mess dress, regardless of its color.

liaison officer:
When you've got two different organizations trying to work together, you've got a problem. It's the job of the liaison officer to keep those problems to a minimum.

light colonel:
Lieutenant Colonel

lieutenant colonel (LTC):
The middle rank of field-grade officer. Lieutenant colonels are the commanders or execs of battalions, or serve as staff officers at the higher levels.

logistics:
The art and science of getting the stuff—food, petrol, medical supplies, blankets, ammunition, and spare parts, including spare soldiers—to the right place at the right time.

loose dence platoon:
A two-tank tank platoon. The trouble is that it can too easily become a one-tank tank platoon.

maresciallo:
A senior warrant officer rank in the Casalingpaesesercito, roughly equivalent to a chief warrant officer.

major (MAJ):
The lowest level field-grade officer. Most majors serve as staff officers. The Metzadan insignia is a single silver oak leaf, worn on shoulder or collar points.

medic:
A soldier, generally an NCO although sometimes an officer, who is also trained and detailed to provide first-aid and perform minor battlefield surgery.

medician:
A battlefield surgeon/internist, although not a physician. He may be an NCO or an officer. In a medical context, a medician is senior to a medic in the way that a physician is senior to a nurse.

Mercenary's Toast:
"Everybody comes back."

merkava:
x. Hebrew for "chariot." In general use throughout the Thousand Worlds to mean an armed military hovercraft mounting small-caliber automatic weapons and/or rockets. The usual plural is merkavas; the Metzadan plural is merkavot. 2. (Archaic): The main battle tank of the Israel Defense Force, circa 1990. Probably the most survivable tank of its time.

mortar:
A small cannon, very short in proportion to its bore, which throws shells at high angles. Mortars are the infantryman's light artillery. The smaller ones are carried by infantrymen, and the larger ones are mounted on tanks, or hauled about by merkavas and jeeps.

moving overwatch:
"You go first . . . I'll cover you from right behind. When you get to the limit of me covering you, stop. I'll go forward until I'm right behind you again, and then we'll do the same thing again." Faster than the bounding overwatch, as the folks behind can often both move and provide support at the same time.

NCO:
Non-commissioned officer. Corporals and sergeants: enlisted men who command under the authority of an officer.

negative brevet, or Dutch brevet:
A temporary demotion in rank, accompanied by a temporary increase of one-half step in pay grade for each rank demoted. The purpose is to give a critical job to the right person, who may be of the wrong rank. Personnel officers hate Dutch brevets, as it gives them major bookkeeping headaches, particularly with regard to the disposition of war loot.

nightgoggles:
Active (bad) or passive (good) night vision devices. Infrared devices attract attention, and bullets, but are cheaper to manufacture. Devices that amplify ambient light rather than providing their own are more expensive, and require a higher level of technology, but better for those who don't like getting shot at.

OD:
l. Olive drab. An ugly green color, much beloved of some armies.
2. Officer of the day. An officer who is in charge of something—usually an installation of some sort—per order of the CO.

OP:
Observation post, a place from which an enemy may be observed, and from where reports will be sent to a higher authority. It may be either overt or covert. The trouble with overt OPs is that the enemy tends to shoot at them.

operational:
The opposite of "administrative," a state in which there is some serious expectation that there may be combat, and in which standard administrative rules—speed limits, loading of weapons, pre-emptive shooting of possible innocent bystanders—are ignored.

opcon:
Operational control. The temporary placement of a resource under the authority of a local commander.

perp:
Slang for perpendicular. Never used, even by Military Police, as a contraction for "perpetrator."

phut gun:
A small-caliber pistol, equipped with a noise suppressor, shooting a subsonic bullet. Primarily used for assassination and as a backup weapon on reconnaissance.

pour encourager les autres:
An old French expression meaning, literally, "to encourage the others," but more colloquially, "to discourage the others from screwing up." Generally, the reason you give for hanging slackers and cowards.

pravda:
The official truth, presumptively different from the actual truth.

range card:
The list of possible targets and traverse angles made by an autogun crew when emplaced. Primary purpose is to allow the relief crew, coming in at night, to be able to cope with a night attack before they've actually seen the territory. A secondary purpose is to keep everybody aware of areas that the autogun can't get at.

red light:
Direction
not
to shoot someone or something, at least for the time being. E.g., "You've got a red light on the guy in the green uniform." Opposite of green light.

S1, or adjutant:
The personnel officer or department of a military unit smaller than a brigade.

S2:
The intelligence officer or department of a military unit smaller than a brigade.

S3:
The operations and training officer or department of a military unit smaller than a brigade. When the unit doesn't have an exec, the S3 officer is generally third in line of command; in the smaller units the S3 generally is the exec. The S3 is the guy who gets to figure out how the battle is going to be fought, and—generally, Shimon Bar-El has always preferred to do it himself—writes up the orders. In a Metzadan regiment, the S3 is third in the chain of command.

S4:
The logistics and supply officer or department of a military unit smaller than a brigade. The logistics officer is the fellow who makes sure that when the soldiers pull the trigger, not only is there ammunition for them to shoot, but there's been food for them to eat, and that they've had as recent a bath and change of clothes as is feasible.

sniper:
A rifleman whose business it is to kill or wound enemy troops, primarily expecting success through better than average to superb marksmanship skills. He'd also better be real good at concealment: snipers are very much sought after targets.

stabsunderoffizier:
A senior Freiheimer NCO rank, roughly equivalent to a staff sergeant.

squash radio:
A device that will record transmissions, compress, encode and then transmit them on an assigned frequency or "freak," all of which is designed to minimize the possibility of interception.

stag:
A work shift.

Ten:
Metzadan communications designator for the second in command of a unit. If a company's call sign is Safed, the company exec's call sign will be Safed Ten. (See
call signs, Twenty.
)

TTD (Troop Training Detachment):
A loose organization of approximately 250 Metzadan officers and men, which can be expected to train a foreign infantry force ranging in size from a battalion to a brigade.

Twenty:
Metzadan communications code for commander of a unit. If C Company's call sign is Safed, C Company commander's call sign will be Safed Twenty. (See
Ten
.) If the first platoon of C Company's call sign is Safed One, the platoon leader will have Safed One Twenty as his call sign. More colloquially, the commander of a unit. ("Since when are you the Twenty around here?")

tube:
The barrel of an artillery piece. Colloquially, the artillery piece itself.

Virgin:
Somebody who has not been involved in combat.

VCP:
Vehicle check point. Also known as a roadblock.

warrant:
l. Mild colloquialism for a warrant officer. 2. In Metzadan usage, a lateral promotion, particularly for combat specialists. This doesn't confer additional rank, but does nice things to one's pay voucher: a senior private with enough service time gets paid as much as his platoon leader. Warrants are also used to discourage people who are particularly competent at their jobs from seeking linear advancement for the sake of pay.

warrant officer:
Not a Metzadan usage, but in other armies, a system of rank squeezed in between the highest level of noncommissioned officer rank, and the lowest level of commissioned officer ranks. Generally speaking, a man is promoted to warrant officer as a way of either giving him rank over senior NCOs
without
turning him into a goddamn butterbar, or so that an enlisted man can be required to perform functions usually restricted to the officer class, like flying helos.

weapons release:
An authorization to fire at one's own discretion.