SpecOps (Expeditionary Force, #2)

by Craig Alanson

'Grand Exalted Field Marshall El Supremo'."

Rank

Having gotten Skippy to smack some knowledge down on me, I was feeling pretty good about myself. This lasted less than three minutes. Skippy, true to his word, had forwarded a video of our conversation to the science team. And to everyone else on the ship. That was great. What was not so great was, that shithead little beer can had replaced my image in the video with a chimpanzee. Instead of me sitting in the command chair, it was a chimp, with my voice coming out of its mouth. And not just sitting in the chair, this chimp was swinging around the bridge, eating bananas, scratching itself, playing with its private parts, hooting and bouncing around the bridge, and other embarrassing things. My first notice that something had gone horribly wrong, was when people in the CIC began laughing uncontrollably while looking at their zPhones.

Monkey record

Crap. On the video feed to the rest of the ship, Skippy had replaced my image and voice, with Barney. Barney, the big stupid purple dinosaur. He hadn't only altered my voice; he'd changed some of my words. My speech didn't begin with 'This is Colonel Bishop', it began with 'Duh, hello, boys and girls', in classic moronic Barney tones. There I was, a big idiotic dinosaur, sitting in the command chair in my uniform, talking like I had an IQ of 30. Damn it, I hate that smug little beer can.

Barney the motivator

'it is better to remain silent and be thought an idiot, than to speak and remove all doubt'.”

Quote

"Yes. The difference is," Smythe explained, "most of your trails in the States were set up by governments, on public land, or on private land where the owner allows access? In Britain, the public has access across private lands, because for thousands of years, peasants had right of access to get water, to drive their animals to market or to pasture. The current landowners can't block the public from walking across their land, because of the historical right of access. There is a group which organizes what they call a mass trespass once a year, to walk all the trails in Britain, in order to maintain the public's right of access."

Right of acces

"Blasphemy is a particularly bad idea right now, Joe. Prayer would be entirely appropriate in this case.”

Blasphemy

"This is an awful, idiotic, terrible, terrifying idea," Skippy lamented, "an idea of epic, incredible, mind-blowing stupidity, Joe. Truly, in the history of the galaxy, I can't think of anything that even comes close."

Plan