Reference // 36 terms

Glossary

The language of the airlock. Terms below are defined as used in the StarTeam fiction — some are real EVA terms borrowed straight, some are invented whole.

EVA

Extravehicular activity — work outside a spacecraft in a pressure suit. Real term; the entire premise of the character. Cass’s callsign, EVA-1, marks him as StarTeam’s first-out specialist.

Airlock

The chamber between pressurized interior and vacuum. Real term. The Vigil has four; Cass’s rule is that the airlock cycle is never rushed, because every EVA emergency the lore records began with someone hurrying the lock.

Tether

The line that keeps a spacewalker attached to the ship. Real term, sacred object in the fiction: “Gravity is a rumor. The tether is the truth.” (Invented dialogue.)

PLSS

Portable Life Support System — the backpack that keeps a suited spacewalker alive: oxygen, power, cooling, comms. Real term (pronounced “pliss”). Cass’s PLSS discipline — checking it twice, flying it to the margins — is a recurring lore detail.

AEGIS Mark VII “Longhaul”

Cass’s suit: the fiction’s heavy EVA rig, orange and graphite, rated for extended operations. Invented. The Mark VII is a hard-shell torso with modular limbs, and Cass’s unit is the first production article — he has never worn another.

Driftline rig

The fiction’s maneuvering backpack — a precision jetpack for free-flight EVA. Invented. Cass flies it the way Jinx flies shuttles: by feel. Named for the “driftline,” the plotted intercept path Rin calculates for every free-flight op.

MMOD

Micrometeoroid and orbital debris — the constant sandblasting of everything outside a hull. Real term. The graze on Cass’s shoulder plate (SC 1204) was MMOD; the Long Dark (SC 1219) was one long MMOD storm.

Decompression

Loss of pressure — in a suit, the emergency; in a compartment, the disaster. Real term. The fiction treats it with total seriousness: the Kestrel Rescue is a decompression story, and “vacuum doesn’t negotiate” is the doctrine it produced.

The fizz

The fiction’s slang for decompression sickness — nitrogen bubbles in the blood from too-rapid pressure change. Real condition, invented slang. Cass is cross-trained in fizz protocols; Okafor trusts his field calls.

Starhold Vigil

StarTeam’s orbital flagship: converted tender, rapid-response platform, home. Invented. Third hull of the name; the patch wall lives in its EVA bay.

Meridian Ring

The civilian habitat where Cass was born — forty thousand people, suit culture, the airlock as front door. Invented.

The Concord

The Concord of Habitats — the civilian alliance funding StarTeam. Invented. No navy, no marines: a rescue crew with teeth, by founding philosophy.

Meridian Sector

The settled volume StarTeam protects — lanes, habitats, stations, shipyards. Invented. Nobody in the sector lives on a planet.

The Jackals

Rogue salvagers operating in the sector’s gray zone — they strip wrecks, and sometimes make them. Invented. Cass’s doctrine: nobody drifts alone, even them.

Debris storm

The sector’s weather: cascading fragments sweeping the lanes. Invented as a standing hazard (the physics is real; the sector’s storms are fiction). Rin plots them; Cass inspects the hull after.

Kessler cascade

A runaway collision chain rendering orbits unnavigable. Real concept, fictional history: one system in the sector’s past was lost to it — the cautionary tale behind the Concord’s salvage laws.

Hull breach

A break in the pressure hull. Real term, and the emergency Cass was born for — the Kestrel (SC 1204) made his name on one.

Cold soak

In the fiction, a suit or component left too long in shadow, chilled past its operating envelope. Real phenomenon, fiction slang. Part of every pre-EVA check: nothing cold-soaked flies.

Hard dock

A rigid, sealed connection between two craft. Real term. Cass’s recovery work often ends with one — the Driftline Run’s hand-docked hauler is the famous case.

Soft seal

The fiction’s term for a temporary pressure seal — patches, clamps, and once, a suited body holding a ferry’s seal for eleven minutes. Invented term, real techniques.

Umbilical

The bundled lifeline — O2, power, comms, sometimes coolant — connecting suit to ship on tethered EVA. Real term. Managing umbilicals without tangles in a debris field is the unglamorous core of the job.

Buddy system

No solo EVA without a buddy on the line. Real practice, elevated to doctrine in the fiction after SC 1212 — “nobody drifts alone” as procedure, not sentiment.

Suit check

The pre-EVA verification ritual. Real practice; Cass runs it twice — once by the book, once by feel — and the fiction treats the second pass as the one that catches things.

Hot mic

An open comm channel. Real term. Theo keeps Cass’s mic hot on every EVA; the SC 1212 cadet self-rescue was forty minutes of hot-mic coaching.

Safe haven

A pressurized refuge — the nearest place a suited worker can get to air in an emergency. Real concept. Every EVA plan Cass files names two.

Rescue ball

The fiction’s inflatable single-person rescue sphere — a real NASA concept from the 1970s, borrowed into the lore as standard Vigil equipment. Cass has never needed one. He carries one anyway.

RCS

Reaction control system — small thrusters for attitude control. Real term. The Driftline rig’s RCS quads are what Cass flies “by feel,” including dead-stick recoveries on partial thrust.

Delta-v

Change in velocity — the currency of spaceflight. Real term. Rin speaks it, Cass spends it, and the Driftline Run’s legend is really a delta-v story: enough to get there, barely enough to get back.

Attitude

A craft’s orientation in space. Real term. “Attitude is everything” is Jinx’s joke and Rin’s religion; Cass’s helmet HUD shows it as a permanent readout.

Perigee

Lowest point of an orbit. Real term. Intercept math lives and dies on it — the Driftline Run’s plot hinged on catching the hauler near perigee, where the geometry closed fastest.

Solar storm

Eruptions of radiation and charged particles from the star. Real hazard. EVA during one is the fiction’s definition of a bad idea — which is when the Silent Array needed rebuilding.

Radiation

The invisible tax on every hour outside the hull. Real hazard; the fiction tracks Cass’s cumulative dose the way athletes track mileage — Okafor’s long argument for getting him off the hull eventually.

Pressure differential

The difference in pressure across a seal or a suit wall — the force vacuum exerts on everything. Real physics, and the reason “the suit is the mission”: the differential never sleeps.

Star Cycle (SC)

The fiction’s calendar. Invented. “Now” is SC 1219; Cass was born SC 1186. All dates on this site use it — see Methodology for why.

EVA-1

Cass’s StarTeam designation: first-out EVA specialist. Invented. It is a role, not a rank — and, per the lore, a promise the crew holds him to.

Longhaul

Shorthand for the AEGIS Mark VII “Longhaul” suit. Invented. Orange and graphite, first production article, a hundred patches’ worth of history in the fiction.

Stencil

The mission-patch tradition: every op earns a stenciled patch on the Vigil’s airlock wall, painted by hand. Invented tradition. The hundredth patch is a plain orange square reading “100.”

“Nobody drifts alone”

StarTeam’s informal motto, originating with Cass (SC 1212), cemented at Tether’s End (SC 1216). Invented. Both an operational rule and a promise — the sentence the whole site is built around.

Source notes

• Real-world terms are defined as in reality; StarTeam-specific terms, places, and history are invented by this site’s writers. See Methodology.
• Character identity anchor: Vizlings app card (StarTeam), card description “Body space suit hero.”