"Put that fucking pistol down!"

Jackson squinted at the hatchway, now wide open with an irate Admiral Marcum, along with a concerned looking Major Ortiz standing behind him. The mutinous Marine officer must have given Marcum the security override code for the hatch.

The Ares had been in high-orbit over the irregularly shaped, rapidly cooling lump of molten rock that had once been Haven for the last two weeks. Jackson had been completely incapacitated for more than half of that time, leaving command of the ship to a distraught Jillian Davis. The hatch closing captured his attention again, and he saw that there were actually two people in his office: Admiral Joseph Marcum and Colonel Robert Blake.

"Admiral, may I help you?" Jackson slurred out. "Forgive me for not standing."

"Captain Wolfe, you will cease this idiotic behavior immediately," Marcum said.

"You know, Admiral... it's not smart to antagonize someone with a weapon." Jackson hefted the pistol. "Especially someone who doesn't really like you to begin with."

Blake and Marcum just looked at each other before the Air Force colonel reached over and, with surprising quickness, plucked the pistol out of his hand, ejecting the magazine and clearing the chamber before setting it back on the desk with the slide locked back.

"Well then..." Jackson stared at the now harmless chunk of steel. "I guess I have no choice but to listen to you, Admiral. If you're here to arrest me, you should know that I was about to make that a moot point."

"Are you about finished, Senior Captain?" Marcum snarled. "You had best unfuck yourself and quick. Your crew can't see you like this. When's the last time you've been out of this room?"

"You can't seriously be contemplating leaving me in command of anything." Jackson swallowed hard as his stomach and the bourbon fought it out.

"Jackson, this isn't anybody's fault." Marcum slid wearily into one of the chairs and gestured for Blake to take the other.

"I was too blind to realize the Phage were playing me." Jackson leaned back. "I pulled all of our forces to one area and left it clear for them to come up and hit us in the worst possible place. They even said so much to me directly."

"You made the hard choice to stand fast when nobody else wanted to even admit we were in a war," Marcum said. "The truth is, Captain, that there would never have been a significant force in this system. The politicians would never allow one enclave to have any sort of military presence over Haven. That's why this has been Black Fleet's home for all these years, and no other numbered fleets are welcome. They certainly weren't going to revisit that policy just because a few Frontier worlds were at risk. Haven was always going to fall if the Phage wanted it."

"That's rather defeatist of you," Jackson said.

"My point is that this disaster isn't just one man's fault," Marcum said. "We didn't take the threat seriously, and now billions are dead for it."

"So what happens next?"

"We do what humans have always done: we persevere," Marcum said. "We've debriefed your Earther friend here, although he keeps claiming he's an American.' He's got a lot more information on the Phage than we've been able to collect in the last four years, including one very significant vulnerability."

At this Jackson perked up and looked over at the colonel.

"That's right, Captain," Blake confirmed. "There is one thing that could bring the Phage down completely, but my team has never had the resources to exploit it by ourselves. So the question is this: do you want us to leave you alone so you can finish what you were about to do here, or do you want to saddle up one last time and go riding for some payback?"

Jackson gave the officer a small, feral smile. "I'm listening."

Thank you for reading Call to Arms.

If you enjoyed the book the story will continue with:.

Counterstrike.

Book Three of the Black Fleet Trilogy.

Coming Fall/Winter of 2015.

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From the author...

So there we have it, the dreaded second act and the even more dreaded cliffhanger. I tried to make it as gentle as possible and looking back it's actually the first time I've ever used that particular literary device in a published work.

This trilogy is very much about Jackson Wolfe and his crew, but in this second book I had to give a little more detail into the politics at play in this universe for things to make sense. My goal was to give enough detail to satisfy any questions you may have without grinding the story to a halt. We are on the brink of all out war, after all.

I know I've said this before, but thank you again for the overwhelmingly positive response to this series. With this in mind I've already started writing "Counterstrike" by the time this book is released so that books two and three come out back to back. For the Omega Force readers I hope to have book eight out towards the end of this year.

Cheers!

Josh.

end.