Joseph Bishop

Colonel Bishop Joe watching a Ruhar Dropship crash First Name Joseph Last Name Bishop Alias(s) Joe, Joey, Captain, Colonel Joe, The Barney Guy Rank / Title Colonel Affiliation(s) The Merry Band of Pirates Physical Description Species Humans Sex Male Height 6' 3" Hair / Eye / Skin Color Mouse Fur Brown, Blue, White Notable Attribute(s) Clever, Dumbass Vitals Status Living First Appearance ExForce 1: Columbus Day Last Known Location Aboard a Thuranin drop ship. Joseph Bishop is an Army soldier from Maine, who finds himself in a whole heap of adventure due to no fault of his own. Joe is also the main character of the series and the narrator of most parts of the books in the main series.  In mission after mission,  Joe shows his strength in command as a numerous times who can think of ideas that are beyond Skippy's imagination. This infuriates Skippy so much that it prompts him write a book of which Chapter One was titled "Why I hate Your stupid ugly face".  Before Columbus Day Joe is first seen driving his parents' truck outside of Thompson Corner Maine when the Ruhar attacked on Columbus Day. Joe joined the Army because he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life and he wanted to eventually use the Army to pay for school when he knew what he wanted to go to college for. After a tour in Nigeria, Peacekeeping, and fighting extremists, Joe returned home for leave. Joseph Earned the nickname "Barney" by capturing a Ruhar Soldier with a group of rednecks using an Ice cream truck with the notable character painted on the side during Book One: Columbus Day.

Events of Expeditonary Force Columbus Day Spec Ops Paradise Black Ops Zero Hour Mavericks Renegades Homefront Armageddon Valkyrie Following the attack by the Ruhar, which was fought off by the Kristang, Humanity allied with the Kristang, believing them to be their allies. The Kristang requested units to be sent off-world to fight the Ruhar as soon as possible, so the various nations of the United Nations Expeditionary Force (UNEF scrambled to pull enough people off-world quickly enough, and Joe happened to be available so took the Space Elevator and was shipped off-world to Camp Alpha. On Camp Alpha, Joe was promoted to Sergeant because of a personnel shortage. He also had a short romantic relationship with Shauna Jarrett which ended when (UNEF) was shipped deployed to Pradassis. Joe's fire team was designated as an embedded observation team in Teskor Village which is where He met Lester Cornhut and began his short career as an intelligence collector from The Burgermeister which he would report to Emily Perkins. During the Ruhar's attempt to retake Gehtanu Bishop's thrown together group shot down two Ruhar Whale type dropships, killing over a thousand Ruhar soldiers which caused him to be recognized by the Kristang and promoted to Colonel. While on assignment planting potatoes, Col. Joe refused orders from the Kristang to kill innocent Ruhar civilians in retaliation for a global outburst against UNEF causing him to be imprisoned by the Lizards. After breaking out of the Lizard prison during the Ruhar's second attempt to take Gehtanu; He was interned by the Ruhar in a hallway in a warehouse where he met Skippy. Joe then convinced a group of ExFor members (including: Margaret Adams, Kong Chang, Fal Desai, Renee Giraud, Yu Qishan, and Jennifer Simms) to follow him to the stars. This group of personnel then left the planet with Joe in command (for no other reason than that He was the highest-ranking officer, and as Chang put it, "You are lucky") in a Ruhar ship and hijacked a Kristang Frigate (The Heavenly Morning Flower of Glorious Victory), then a Thuranin Star Carrier to become The Original Merry Band of Pirates. All of this was done with the help of Skippy, who, at some point in the book, Joe makes a deal with: Shut down the wormhole to Earth, and the humans will take the Dutchman out to help Skippy contact the Elders. After shutting down Earth’s nearby wormhole using the Elder wormhole controller captured on the previous mission, the Flying Dutchman set course for the stars to look for Elder communication nodes for the Elder AI called Skippy, as per Joe's deal with him in Book One. The first Elder site chosen for exploration turned out not to have a comm node, so Bishop asked Skippy to look for uncatalogued Elder sites using Skippy's magnificent prediction abilities. None of those sites contained any Elder comm nodes, and at one site, The Flying Dutchman was ambushed by Thuranin destroyers, barely escaping. Skippy flew the ship to a system to affect repairs to the ship, which necessitated the crew leaving the ship. Unfortunately, the planet that the crew needed to evacuate to was not as uninhabited as Skippy believed, leaving Joe to make the decision of whether to go to the planet, saving the crew but risking exposing humans' secret, or staying on the ship, killing the crew but keeping humanity's secret. He eventually decides to land on the planet Newark, a decision that works out but has long term consequences. During his time on Newark, Joe and Skippy's relationship grew over Skippy's fears about what happened to Newark Joe is dressed down by UNEF due to the events in Spec Ops, and almost loses out on the command of The Flying Dutchman until Skippy intervenes with an ultimatum. Ultimately command of the mission falls to Hans Chotek. Joseph Bishop travels to Paradise with Skippy to activate the maser projectors on the planet's surface and save the humans on Paradise from extinction and slavery, as the Kristang were planning on taking back the planet. <ref>ExForce 3: Paradise After the events of ExForce 3: Paradise, Skippy informs Joe that Earth still isn't out of the woods and that The Merry Band of Pirates would have to attack a Ruhar meeting with Kristang wanting to travel to Earth. The original plan fails and Joe and the Merry Band of Pirates end up having to conduct a Black Operation with the help of Doctor Sarah Rose on a Kristang world called Kobamik. At the end of the book, Skippy goes offline, leaving the pirates stranded on the planet. However, the pirates manage to return to the Dutchman, with its systems still mostly offline. In Zero Hour, Joe has to deal with the consequences of Skippy's vacation. He makes the hard decision to send Nagatha into Skippy's canister to look for him, risking her own life in the process. Luckily, Joe's decision pays off and Skippy is rescued. However, Joe and the MBOP now have to go on a rescue mission to save Skippy. During this book, Joe develops a higher level of respect for Hans Chotek as they spend several months together when the ship is stranded in a star system called the "Roach Motel". Joe is on The Flying Dutchman as it is dealing with an energy virus. Joe just comes up with "The Greatest Idea of All Time" and literally almost breaks Skippy by blowing his mind. Joe went fishing and was picked up by a dropship, he had to leave his friend's Jeep in the woods because he had to "steal" the Dutchman from the Delta crew trying to seize it. Fun facts: This is the second (?) time Joe time-traveled forward in time, almost died a couple of times in this book, and Simms made Skippy stop specifically so she could infiltrate a supermarket to grab a case of Real Marshmallow Fluff. info here. In Armageddon, Joe makes one of the most significant blunders of his career at the end of the book, which results in Margaret Adams almost dying. Luckily, Adams survives, but Joe beats himself up about this decision in this book and in Valkyrie. However, Joe did manage to capture a Maxholx warship during this book. In addition, right before Joe's blunder, Adams and Joe share a 'moment'. During this book, Joe becomes more blatant about his 'special regard' for Adams as she recovers, much to his own displeasure. Joe helps her along in recovery, where the two of them share another moment. However, Joe manages to convince himself that perhaps the person who he shared a moment with wasn't the real Adams after multiple attempts to ask Skippy about Adams' feelings for him results in Skippy telling him to just ask her himself. Joe decides that he needs to just forget what he hoped for and leave her alone.

Relationships Skippy Joe considers Skippy his best friend and was actually upset when he thought he'd killed him by over taxing his capacities inciting a Kristang civil war. Margaret Adams Joe rescues Adams from a Kristang prison Kong Chang Joe's second in command Jennifer Simms info here Nagatha Christie Joe's biggest fan.

Rank US Army Specialist (Book 1: Columbus Day) US Army Sergeant (Book 1: Columbus Day). Promoted on Camp Alpha. US Army Colonel (Book 1: Columbus Day). Promoted on Paradise. Joe doesn't consider the promotion legitimate, still considering himself a buck Sergeant as he says. He continues to consider himself a Sergeant until the end of (Book 7: Renegades ) when he announces his arrival back to Earth and refers to himself as "Colonel Bishop". This marks a large shift in Joe's confidence, finally believing in himself, in no small part due to the help of Margaret Adams. As of (Book 8: Armageddon) UNEF has confirmed Bishop's rank as officially Colonel.

Notable Information Joe was recommended for a bronze star after trying to save his fire squard by jumping grenade; he never received one.

References