This timeline is being modified constantly as the entire series is being re-listened to. This is being done in order to clarify when events take place and that the specific mentions of the passage of time are accounted for. Hopefully, after the series is finished, this will be as close an approximation as possible.
SPOILER ALERT! The section(s) below SCHMAYBE includes Spoilers.
Elders create super-duty wormholes to the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way.
Elders strip raw materials from those satellite star formations to build millions of effect generators over thousands of years.
Elders place the effect generators outside the Milky Way, creating the Galactic Shield.
Elders use the Wormhole Network and create Roach Motel systems that draw power from the parent stars to power the Galactic Shield.
Elders build the Guardians to protect the Roach Motels.
Elders build the Sentinels to protect the Galactic Shield by preventing any civilization from using Elder Technology that could possibly endanger the Galactic Shield.
The Rinhalu discover the Maxolhx, take them on as a client species and nurture them.
The Maxolhx take advantage of the Rindhalu and steal technology from them, becoming more and more advanced (but still not as advanced as the Rindhalu).
The Maxolhx discover Elder weapons.
The Rindhalu-Maxolhx war begins. Both sides believe the other side started the conflict.
The Rindhalu and Maxolhx use Elder weapons against each other and the Maxolhx destroy the Rindhalu homeworld.
Sentinels awaken and punish the Rindhalu and Maxolhx civilizations, knock them back into the stone age and then go dormant again.
The Rindhalu and Maxolhx rebuild their civilizations.
The Rindhalu discover the Jeraptha and take them on as clients.
The Maxolhx discover the Bosphuraq and take them on as clients.
The Bosphuraq discover the Thuranin and take them on as clients.
The Rindhalu discover the Ajackus & Vreen and take them on as clients.
The Jeraptha discover the Ruhar & Torgalau and take them on as clients.
The Thuranin steal technology from the Bosphuraq, eventually liberate themselves, become direct clients of the Maxolhx and contemporaries of the Bosphuraq.
The Maxolhx discover the Esselgin and take them on as clients.
The Thuranin discover the Kristang and force the Warrior Caste into dominance.
Billions of the non-Warrior Caste split from the Kristang and become Verd-kris.
The Bosphuraq discover the Wurgalan and take them on as clients.
The Torgalau discover the Lemoostra and take them on as clients.
The Wurgalan discover the Urgar and take them on as clients.
The Verd-kris become defacto clients of the Ruhar.
Joe and the Smurfs steal a Super Softie Ice Cream truck (with a large Barney the Dinosaur painted on the side) and capture a wounded Ruhar they call Fuzzy Face. Joe gives him first aid.
Joe gets the nickname Barney.
~Late October 2030
Kristang arrive at Earth and defeat the Ruhar, sending them packing.
The bulk of the Kristang fleet bug out a week after defeating the Ruhar.
Joe gets new assignment to coordinate agriculture activities on UNEF occupied Paradise.
Joe convoy is attacked by the Ruhar during Planting operations near Habitrail on Paradise, destroying all Seed Cargo.
Joe refuses the unlawful order to kill 8 innocent, unarmed Ruhar civilians.
The Kristang kill Lieutenant Miranda Collins (who refuses to attack a Ruhar school) by taking control of her Dobreh / "Chicken" fighter and launching missiles at the school and then crashing her aircraft.
Joe is placed under arrest for disobeying a direct order and taken to a Kristang Prison Base on Paradise.
Chang refuses a Kristang order to kill innocent, unarmed Ruhar civilians.
Chang is placed under arrest for disobeying a direct order and taken to the same Kristang Prison Base as Joe.
A Ruhar assault damages the Kristang Prison Base, allowing Joe to escape captivity.
Skippy spoofs the Ruhar's ships in orbit then send a distress signal to the Kristang.
The newly formed group fight the surprised Kristang while Desai, in the Dodo, destroys the bridge of the Kristang frigate, the Heavenly Morning Flower of Glorious Victory. The group successfully captures the frigate and rename it The Flower.
The Pirates successfully raid the base and Joe has it destroyed.
The Pirates go through the wormhole to Earth and Skippy closes it but it will reset in a month.
Above Earth, Skippy jumps the Kristang frigate in orbit into the Sun and blows all the Kristang in the troop ship, "The Ever Long Remembrance Of Khost Flacronda Who Served With Ultimate Honor", out into space.
Before leaving Earth, Colonel Joseph Bishop and Skippy find that there are two sites that are good candidates within three thousand light years of Earth.
Skippy jumps the Yu Qishan into Mars orbit to force the nations of Earth to cooperate in order to retrieve her.
The Dutchman leaves Earth searching for a Comm Node for Skippy.
The Merry Band of Pirates arrive at and searched the first candidate (an abandoned Kristang Research Station). It was a complete bust.
Skippy predicts where undiscovered Elder sites are.
The Pirates search Elder sites finding Comm Nodes that don't work.
Jumping to another possible Elder site, they get ambushed because there's a hidden enemy Kristang base at the Elder site.
The Pirates narrowly defeat the Kristang but the Dutchman is badly damaged.
The Pirates land on the planet Newark while Skippy takes about six months to rebuild The Dutchman.
Newark is an ice world that has a small team of Kristang searching for Elder Technology. The Pirates trick Kristang into flying their dropships into an ambush. The Pirates drive and hike across Newark and kill all the Kristang and recover Elder tech.
Skippy discovers that Newark was moved out of its original orbit a few million years ago, causing an ice age that wiped out an entire primitive, but sentient, population.
~Around October 2033
While deceiving Kristang coming to pick up their group from Newark, Skippy learned that the Swift Arrow clan had paid the Thuranin for a ride on a Long-Range Surveyor ship to Earth to pick up White Wind clan leaders because they were needed to sign off on Kristang clan takeover legalities.
The Dutchman ambushes and destroys the Thuranin Surveyor ship heading for Earth.
On Paradise, Baturnah Logellia is informed that forty human females are currently pregnant and seventeen human children have been born since the Humans landed on Paradise.
Skippy learns that the humans on Paradise are in trouble because the Ruhar don't want the planet and are going to trade it to Kristang.
Skippy reveals that giant ground-to-orbit MASER Projectors are hidden and buried on Paradise by the Black Trees clan, the last Kristang clan who occupied Paradise before the Ruhar took over.
Perkins' team are assigned by the Ruhar to reactivate the final giant ground-to-orbit MASER Projectors buried on the isolated Tavalen Island on Paradise.
Jarrett blows up Tavalen Island before a group of Kristang commandos can use it to attack Ruhar, saving thirty nine thousand eight hundred and sixty four Ruhar in troop ships that the Kristang 39 Commando team were targeting.
The Fire Dragon clan negotiate trading a planet or access to a wormhole to the Ruhar for a ride to Earth and back.
Skippy discovered that the communications sub-mind he installed on the Thuranin comm relay station had developed a personality and became self-aware and sentient (named Nagatha Christie by Skippy).
"Grand Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Skippy" debuts his new avatar to the Pirates.
Skippy finds a dead Elder AI canister, investigates it and goes offline for a about seventeen hours because it contained a worm that killed the AI.
The Pirates pick up three abandoned Kristang frigates and convert them into a single Q-ship used to attack the Ruhar negotiating team.
Skippy discovers intel of an impending attack on the Jeraptha by the Thuranin. He surreptitiously provides the intel to the Jeraptha.
The Jeraptha hand the Thuranin a crushing defeat using the intel Skippy provided.
The Jeraptha launch an investigation into who provided the intel on the planned Thuranin attack.
~Around January 2035
The Kristang make an extremely generous offer to the Ruhar for a ride to Earth and back and the Ruhar accepted.
The Pirates' Spec Ops Teams launch a ground attack on Kobamik to spark a conflict between the three-largest Kristang clans (the Black Trees clan, Fire Dragon clan and Swift Arrow clan), starting a civil war.
While the teams are getting ready to evac Kobamik, Skippy becomes infected by the AI-killing worm and goes offline.
Capitaine Renee Giraud of the French team suffers radiation poisoning.
The teams return to the Dutchman using Skippy's Plan B.
~Around July 2035
With Skippy still offline for weeks, Joe asks Nagatha to do something very dangerous.
The Mavericks limp to Camp Alpha in the Deal Me In.
The Mavericks discover the Kristang are infecting Keepers of the Faith with a bio-weapon that will also infect the Ruhar.
The Mavericks take Dodo dropships down to the surface of Camp Alpha.
Velt Ser-Kotreh Tutula sacrifices her life by maneuvering her Vulture to intercept a missile about to hit Striebich's and Bonsu's ship and kill them.
The Mavericks kill the Kristang, but the infected Keepers are already en route to Paradise.
The Mavericks and the Keepers have to quarantine themselves.
The civilian Jeraptha (converted) star carrier, the Sure Thing, arrives at Camp Alpha.
The Jeraptha Captain of the Sure Thing, Vencerientu Gumbano, is reluctant to take the Mavericks and the Keepers due to their possible infection with the bio-weapon.
Arlon Dahl refuses to go without the Mavericks. Surprisingly, Bift Colhsoon also refuses to leave the Mavericks.
Arlon Dahl works out a deal to quarantine the dropship and take everyone back to Paradise.
The virus starves itself out and the Pirates head to Camp Alpha to rescue the Mavericks.
Pirates capture the infected Keepers and Skippy uses them to create a vaccine.
Skippy covertly disseminated this information and the humans and Ruhar on Paradise are safe.
Skippy replaces the Dutchman's original Thuranin computer.
Skippy re-arranged his internal matrix and the restriction against sharing technology has been reduced somewhat.
Skippy informs Joe that while they have done well at fixing each crisis they have come across to keep Earth safe, it's not a long-term solution.
Skippy says that all the gamma ray bursts from the Dutchman going through what is supposed to be a dormant wormhole near Earth will be visible within sixty years and there's nothing they can do to stop that.
The Pirates locate humanity's beta site and call it Avalon.
Skippy suspects there is a stealthed gas giant in the system they name Mira.
Hans Chotek, the Three Stooges, a few military personnel and most civilians set up camp on Avalon while the Dutchman heads back to Earth to give them the news.
The Maxolhx consider sending a full battlegroup to Earth.
The Pirates frame the Bosphuraq for the attack on the Maxolhx.
The Pirates attack a Bosphuraq research facility and Skippy modifies the star to suggest the Bosphuraq had been working on spacetime weapons.
The Maxolhx decided to send a battlegroup to Earth anyway.
~Around January 2040
Skippy remembers that the Elders created a shield that sealed off the Milky Way and its immediate neighborhood from intergalactic jumps.
Skippy remembers that the Elders left behind Sentinels and Guardians to protect the shield.
Joe has the idea to capture a Maxolhx warship by getting Skippy to slice it in half using a wormhole.
The Pirates successfully slice apart two Maxolhx Extinction-class battlecruisers and a Maxolhx heavy cruiser.
Skippy uses the sections to upgrade the Dutchman and construct Valkyrie.
The Pirates rescue about a hundred and eighty kidnapped humans (mostly children) who were being used by the Kristang Fire Dragon clan and Thuranin as test beds for a bioweapon.
Occurs immediately after the events of Valkyrie
(~10.75 years after Columbus Day, 2030)
~Around July 2041
Skippy has disappeared and the crews of Valkyrie and the Dutchman are fighting for their lives.
Joe has been captured by the Thuranin, held for three days on the ship and then taken back to Rikers.
Simms tells the native AI that she will surrender the ship if the native AI stops attacking the crew and asks what it would do after it kills the crew.
Simms tells the native AI that it has only two options: 1. Fly the ship by itself, hiding from the Maxolhx until the ship's systems fail and it drifts alone forever in empty space. 2. Join the Pirates.
The native AI agrees to help the Pirates, but is immediately destroyed by a Maxolhx "kill switch" program.
The program also erases all software that is linked to Valkyrie's systems, including the crew's zPhones.
Chang gives the order to abandon the Dutchman in dropships.
Simms rigs a nuclear weapon for detonation aboard Valkyrie.
The Dutchman's reactors don't explode and Chang orders everyone back the Dutchman.
Joe awakens in a Kristang hospital and the Thuranin, Tweedledum, questions him.
Dr. Friedlander notices an orange light blinking on his zPhone and figured out that Nagatha is trying to communicate with them.
Nagatha, using an old Vietnam-Era POW Tap Code. but with blinking lights instead of tap sounds, provides Dr. Friedlander with instructions on how to restart the reactors.
Skippy returns after about nine and a half days and destroys the Thuranin ship in orbit.
Skippy helps Joe escape from the Kristang hospital.
Joe evades Kristang chasing him and waits for rescue from Rikers by the Pirates.
Nagatha contains the worm and is able to bring the Dutchman's systems back online.
The crew of Valkyrie transfer aboard Dutchman, before they suffocate.
The Dutchman jumps near Rikers pick up Skippy and rescue Joe.
Skippy and Nagatha develop and test millions of new firewalled control AIs on Valkyrie.
Joe decides not to tell the crew the truth about why Skippy disappeared.
The Dutchman jumps back to Valkyrie, crew re-board and Skippy begins repairs.
Chang the Dutchman to hit Thuranin recon ships.
A Thuranin frigate jumps in and attacks Valkyrie.
Joe has Skippy create a microwormhole within a microwormhole, expand it and jump Valkyrie through.
When Skippy reappeared, he was damaged by space dust, so cleaning bots "dust the awesomeness".
Two new control AIs on Valkyrie, named Bobby and Billy, merge to become Bilby.
Valkyrie and the Dutchman reunite.
~Around October 2041
Skippy tells all of the Pirates about his recovered memories.
Some of the Pirates take shore leave on Club Skippy.
Joe agrees to help Skippy verify his memories by visiting ancient Elder battle sites.
The Rindhalu request a joint investigation with the Maxolhx into the Ghost Ship.
The Dutchman revists Newark and Skippy remembers that he killed the an Elder AI during the AI War. Skippy also remembers that the Elder AI gave up and allowed Skippy to kill it.
The Dutchman returns to Club Skippy and the crew of the Dutchman take several days of shore leave.
Valkyrie and the Dutchman travel to the far end to the far end of the Backstop wormhole that's waking up.
The Maxolhx discover that wormholes in the network closest to Earth have moved.
The Pirates change course to a Maxolhx relay station but can't access it without physical verification.
The Pirates go to a Thuranin relay station thirty eight hours travel time away. Skippy downloaded the information and they jumped away.
Skippy tells Joe that the Maxolhx are sending three battle groups to Rikers and that a Rindhalu ship is accompanying them.
Skippy discovers that other wormholes in the network closest to Earth have also moved and a dormant wormhole sixteen lightyears from Earth that Joe names Broomstick, is also waking up.
The STAR and Commandos teams capture three Maxolhx and name them Elmo, Bert and Ernie to use to gain access to a Maxolhx relay station.
Skippy uses Anastacia disguised as a Maxolhx to test the station's physical security.
The staion's AI fries Anastacia.
The Pirates use Elmo to gain access and succeed in downloading information, but the station explodes without warning.
The Dutchman heads to the Backstop wormhole and Valkyrie heads to Avalon with the civilians.
Chang tells Nagatha to prepare a spacetime warp that will collide the Dutchman with the Arvoxita.
Valkyrie jumps in between the Dutchman and the Maxolhx Task Force.
Joe deploys the Elder weapons and prepares to fire and tells Denoth about the Elder weapons he planted.
The Maxolhx leave Earth and return to Maxolhx territory.
Joe tells Skippy to hide the Elder weapons in the Oort Cloud and password protect access to them.
Petty Officer Schmidt and Sergeant Giselle Montand, who joined the Dutchman for the Armageddon mission, left to return to Earth because both their wives were pregnant.
The Dutchman stays at Earth while Valkyrie runs another errand.
The Mavericks leave the surface Tohmaran in a Dodo to surrender to the Maxolhx.
he "Bosphuraq Ghost Ship" jumps in between the Mavericks' Dodo dropship and the Maxolhx cruisers and destroys the cruisers.
Nert meets Skippy and makes fun of his hat, among other things.
Jates meets Skippy and is so pissed to find out that he's an Elder AI, that Jates tries to tear Skippy's lid off and take a big, steamy, lizard dump in his can.
Joe tells Perkins about all the difficulties she had caused the Pirates in their attempts to keep Earth safe.
This timeline is just an approximation based on information and events that are described in the ExForce books. It is not meant to be inarguably accurate. This is all, using a military term, a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess).
In Black Ops (Chapter 19, Pages 263 and 264), Joe mentions that he spent the first six years of his life in Boston, Massachusetts. His father would take him to Logan Airport to watch planes take off and land.
It was the first time Joe had seen an Airbus A380.
The first time an Airbus A380 visited Boston Logan airport was in January 2017.[1]
We can infer that Joe was around six years old in January 2017, since he said he was 20 years old in October 2030.
Time Jump Between Failure Mode and Aftermath
Failure Mode ended around approximately January 2045, when Joe was around 35 years old.
According to Joe, Adams spent 10 months in recovery at the end of Failure Mode placing the date around November 2045.
Assuming within 2 months after she had fully recovered, she proposed to Joe and they got married almost immediately around about January 2046 (when Joe is about 36 years old).
Let's also assume about 3 months after the wedding, Adams became pregnant with the twins because "Mad Dr. Skippy" had to work his magic.
Assuming 9 months later, Adams to went to term and delivered the twins somewhere around January 2047 (when Joe is about 37 years old).
Joe mentions that Jeremy and Renee are 7 years old placing the date at about January 2054 (when Joe is about 44 years old).
Timeline Order
If you wish to listen to or read the ExForce series in the flow of the Timeline, follow these recommendations:
