Quintenary?

quaternary weaponry: Among heavy infantry, who use the M-70 Havoc combat exoskeleton, there are three official categories of weaponry:

  • primary weaponry: the heavy tribarrel, flamer, and target designator built into the exoskeleton;
  • secondary weaponry: additional hardpoint-mounted weapons provided by a modular weapons back, such as the BP-400 Conflagration;
  • tertiary weaponry: weapons carried by, rather than attached to, the exoskeleton.

Quaternary weaponry, therefore, is a term that shows up principally in aftermath reports, meaning “punched to death”. Insofar as the M-70 Havoc provides a twenty-four-fold physical strength multiplier to its wearer, the use of quaternary weaponry against armored troops, vehicles, buildings, and occasional field fortifications is far from unknown.

— Blackjacket’s Dictionary

The Naming Of Ships Is A Difficult Matter

pennant number: The Imperial Navy’s best attempt at a general purpose identification code for ships, other means having proven inadequate.

It is generally held that the true identifier of a ship is its name: that is, after all, what is written upon the hull, and with it travels the ship’s crest and other naval heraldry, figurehead, relics, and traditions. More importantly, the name itself travels with the spirit of the ship.

While this is definitive from the perspective of aelvaqor, this is unfortunately inadequate for administrative purposes. Eucharion’s Spear, for example, has in its time been a war galley (w/RG-14¹), two first-rate ships of the line (w/RL1-12 and w/RL1-56), two battleships (w/BB-4 and w/BB-82), a submarine battleship (w/BS-156), two star battleships (BB-6 and BB-183), and three star dreadnoughts (BD-47, BD-200, and BD-486).

A second form of identification is the hull number, assigned to the hull upon construction. Hull numbers consist of an alphanumeric designation for the graving dock in which the hull was constructed, followed by the serial number assigned by the dockmaster to that hull.

This, too, is inadequate for administrative purposes as it relates to the ship entire. Over the course of its life, a single hull may undergo several refits, which may alter many of the ship’s characteristics, even to the point of altering its type. Consider, for example, the case of Damaschira, who began her career as a Simélia-class destroyer (w/DD-1161), was later retyped along with the rest of her class as a destroyer escort (w/DE-2217), and finally was refit as a dedicated minesweeper (w/MS-141).

For this purpose, the pennant number² was devised. Assigned to a given ship (hull) when it is commissioned, along with its name, the pennant number is updated whenever the ship undergoes a significant refit³ and is never reused after the ship is eventually scrapped and passes its spirit and name to an heir, thus providing a unique designation for both the individual ship and its current set of capabilities and characteristics.

The pennant number consists of a type prefix (also known as the flag superior), identifying the type of the vessel, followed by a numerical suffix (the flag inferior), indicating the order in which the ship in question was commissioned as that type. A ship which is refit into a new type and then back into its original type acquires a new pennant number, unless the second refit is merely to restore its original class.

Small craft are not issued names or pennant numbers, and instead – for administrative purposes – use the pennant number of their mother ship with a numerical suffix indicating order of assignment. For communications, a flight number is used instead.

Blackjacket’s Dictionary


Footnotes:

  1. Historically, not all ships were assigned pennant numbers at the time of commission. Type codes beginning with “R” indicate pennant numbers assigned retrospectively to ships of types which no longer exist. Similarly, both the wet navy and space navy use similar pennant number systems; where both are used in the same context, it is conventional to prefix wet navy pennant numbers with “w/”.
  2. Originally flown by wet navy ships by means of signal flags, hence the name and the names of its components. In later years, and by space navy ships, the pennant number is signaled by the ship’s transponder and used in tactical mesh packet headers.
  3. The definition of significant refit is somewhat ambiguous, but is traditionally held to include any refit sufficient to change the type, or even class, of the ship in question.

The Counterrevolution Will Be Televised

combat instrumentation and logging module (CILM): Part of the standard military-basic biomod package, the combat instrumentation and logging module is an enhanced lifelogger, recording tagged sensory recordings as well as physiological information, armor, weapon, and equipment telemetry, and tactical mesh status. The data recorded by the CILM is used to provide contextual data in after-action reports, for targeted improvement of individual performance and fireteam coordination, and in the development of future training scenarios.

Given the Legions’ institutional sense of humor, the CILM is commonly if unfortunately referred to as the “fight data recorder”.

Blackjacket’s Dictionary

I Want a Happy Ship

happy board: A term used in starships to describe a system status board indicating all systems operating correctly.  While status lights use the same blue-crimson or blue-amber-crimson encoding as other bistate or tristate indicators, studies have shown that most sophonts respond quickly and accurately to emotional inputs, and process these particularly well when communicated by primary body language, such as facial expressions.  As such, computerized system status boards are programmed to supplement the blue color indicator for “operational/running” with a smiling or equivalent expression emoticon, hence the term.  See also sad board.

sad board: A term used in starships to describe a system status board indicating at least one system not operating correctly.  For reasons as described under happy board, which see, computerized system status boards are programmed to supplement the crimson color indicator for “fault state/stopped” with a frowning or equivalent expression emoticon, hence the term.

– Blackjacket’s Dictionary, Imperial Navy Press