Free Call to Arms (Black Fleet Trilogy, Book 2) by Joshua Dalzelle

shaking after the encounter with the Alpha. They seemed to have all the confidence in the universe in his ability to get them through alive. Some of the crew aboard that had served on the Blue Jacket even seemed to look forward to the chance to kick some more alien ass.
    But the truth ate at him: eventually his luck was going to run out. The Phage adapted and learned from each encounter at a frightening rate, and he still relied on panic-fueled inspiration to find workarounds for the inadequacies of human weaponry against the Phage’s true big guns like the Alphas. To make matters worse, even after four years, much of what they thought they knew about their enemy was just best guess. Destroyed Phage ships offered little in the way of useful intel, other than that they were all crewless and were either a form of automaton or, more terrifyingly, were some sort of living machines.
    Jackson left that sort of speculation for the eggheads at Fleet Science and Engineering. He’d worked with CIS and CENTCOM to develop a set of tactics and standard operating procedures when engaging the Phage based on his own experience, but it all went out the window with every battle as they seemed to demonstrate a new ability or completely different behavior. The fact that the two Alphas seemed to have been mimicking Terran missiles and kinetic weapons instead of their usual directed plasma bursts was yet another wrinkle in trying to understand the Phage.
    His comlink chirping made him stop midstride, just before he got to the hatch leading onto his bridge, a soft whine of protest coming from his left leg as he planted all his momentum on the prosthetic. The screen on the unit was a text only message informing him that Captain Forrest wanted to debrief him as soon as possible. He debated making her wait, but he had nothing pressing going on other than trying to come up with a plausible story in his head to explain to his superiors how in the fuck he lost two irreplaceable, top-of-the-line warships in their first real engagement with the enemy.
    He spun on the ball of his right foot and quickly made his way back to his office, confirming the request on his comlink and letting Captain Forrest know he’d be available within the next five minutes.
    “Senior Captain Wolfe.” Captain Olivia Forrest nodded respectfully, her entire demeanor much changed from all the other interactions Jackson had ever had with her. “Thank you for taking my request on such short notice, sir.”
    “Not a problem, Captain.” Jackson shifted in his seat. “Is there a particular reason you wanted a face to face? We’ll compile all of the Artemis ’ s mission data with our own when we submit the final mission report to CENTCOM.”
    “Yes, sir,” she said. “I wanted to apologize for allowing the Alpha to escape the system and for allowing my ship to be so badly damaged.”
    Jackson was surprised for a second time in as many minutes. Olivia Forrest apologized for nothing, especially her own mistakes. The more at fault she was, the more aggressive she became.
    “I think we were all taken by surprise, Captain,” he said carefully. “I’m not ascribing blame to anyone in particular for any of the missteps we made from the time those two Alphas appeared. We’ll parse through the data with a dispassionate eye and make adjustments so next time we don’t repeat our mistakes.”
    “That is very gracious of you, sir,” she said with no hint that she was being anything but sincere. “Your tactics against the other Alpha were inspired, if I may say.” She seemed to hesitate a moment before she continued, looking at each of the other captains before she did. “I also wished to speak with you so I could request permission to withdraw the Artemis back to uncontested space.”
    Jackson leaned back in his chair as he considered her request. The Artemis was banged up but still combat capable. Having her pull out of the system before he knew what had happened to the Icarus