Babylon 5 and all its characters belong to J Michael Strazcynski

I always thought the minari were let off a bit too easy in the canon version. Yes, the humans fired first, but what kind of fool opens his gunports as a greeting during first contact? I don't care that it was a tradition among themselves. To do it with strangers was just plain stupid. Hence this one shot story.

What would have happened if they hadn't stopped the war at the last moment?

Alit Deeron looked at the latest report. It was as she had expected. Another wasted search, another empty system. A quiet command, an equally quiet acknowledgement, and the Trigati opened a jump point and vanished into hyperspace.

The ship was in its night cycle, with only a small number of crewmembers standing watch. Deeron knew that she herself should get some rest in preparation for the next day, but she also knew that she would find it difficult to sleep. Of course, that was nothing new. When was the last time she had slept well? It had been decades. Each time she closed her eyes she saw the same scene, over and over: A sky filled with explosions as ship after ship died under the murderous fire of minbari warcruisers. A blue planet that grew steadily larger as the ships approached to rain down destruction. Seas of fire that engulfed whole continents. The culmination of the minbari crusade. The final victory that brought an end to three years of holy war.

But the victory had not brought them the peace they had sought. The voyage home had been completed in silence, but it had not been the silence of quiet contemplation. Instead the crew members had wandered through the corridors of their ships as if searching for something. When they encountered each other they exchanged glances, furtive, nervous, as though they were all waiting for something to happen.
The arrival on Minbar had been the same: more silence, more glances, that same dreadful sense of anticipation. Then the first murmurs had started, the first words of doubt, until finally, after many months, someone spoke up and asked the question that an entire species had feared to ask: What have we done?

That one question, once asked, had unleashed a storm as the minbari tried to come to terms with what had happened, and failed. The madness that had gripped them was finally receding and now they had to face up to the consequences. In retaliation for the death of a single individual they had committed a crime of a magnitude that could not even be comprehended. An entire species had been destroyed, extinguished forever. A people bound by rules and traditions, the minbari instinctively looked to their leaders for answers. But they had none to give, for they too were awakening from a nightmare, only to find that the nightmare was real.

Voices rose then, offering a desperate hope that perhaps the reports had been exaggerated, that some part of the human species was still alive and could perhaps be saved. Too late, far too late, ships had raced back, jumping from system to system in search of any sign of life, while across minbari space the people had waited for their return, praying that something, anything, might be salvaged from the horror they had wrought. But the searchers had returned empty handed. They had found only dead worlds, ruined cities and decaying corpses. If any humans remained alive, they had fled far away. No trace of them was ever found, and with them the hope for redemption was gone.

Each caste had dealt with the guilt in their own fashion. The workers had erected monument after monument. Symbols of warning they said, so that it would never happen again. By now there was a shrine in every city on every world, but none of them could replace what had been lost. Scholars from the religious caste had searched the destroyed worlds for remnants of the human culture, trying, too late, to decypher the thoughts of a dead species and preserve what little remained. And the warriors? They too had tried to atone. They had gone out among the other races, looking for something, anything they could do. They had met with little sympathy. The narn had looked at them with deep suspicion; the centauri with disdain; and the league, the league had openly reviled them. After all, they had their own guilt to bear. The humans had saved them from the dilgar, but when the humans themselves had needed help, the league had turned its back. Now, when it was far too late, they felt the shame. So, no minbari warrior would ever find a welcome among them. Still they persevered, and even to this very day minbari warships stood between the fleets of hostile species, trying to maintain a fragile peace.

Then, new rumors had started. They travelled from person to person until the sound of their whispering became like a storm. Studies had shown that the minbari race as a whole was diminishing, their numbers ever declining. Each year fewer children were born to replace the ones that passed away. A curse, some called it, brought on the minbari species as punishment for their terrible sin. Scientists and priests alike looked for answers, but none came. There was no scientific reason for the decline in population and no matter how hard they prayed, no answer was ever heard.
More than ever people started to look for someone, anyone, to blame, and the warrior caste became the obvious target. By now the full story of the disastrous first contact had become known, as the human side had been retold by other species, and people openly blamed the warriors for their poor judgement in approaching an unknown species with open gunports. Worse, some rumours had it that it had been a deliberate ploy, that the warriors, eager to find some justification for military expenditures, had deliberately provoked the humans into firing in order to start a war.

For some among the warrior caste, it was the final straw. Shai Alit Branmer, who had commanded the minbari fleet during the final battle, had gone into seclusion shortly after the war. When word came of the curse that he and his fellow warriors had supposedly brought upon their people, he walked alone into the mountains. A search party found his frozen corpse several weeks later. Many others followed his example. Aboard the Trigati, Alit Sineval had done the same. Always a man for grand gestures, he had called together his crew and given a speech in which he denounced the rumours as falsehoods, swearing on the honour of his family and clan that there had been no intention of ever starting a war. Then, before anyone could stop him, Sineval pulled out his sidearm and put the barrel against his head. Even to this day, Deeron could recall that moment with crystal clarity as their revered commander had taken his own life, unable, or unwilling, to continue living in a universe where everything he had ever stood for had been tainted with dishonour.

With Sineval's death command of the Trigati had fallen on Alit Kalain. As he assumed his new responsibilities Kalain had set himself a new task. If the warrior caste had dishonoured the minbari, he said, than it was up to the warrior caste to restore that honour. A man of action, rather than of wisdom, he had searched for advice as to how such a thing might be achieved, and in the end he had found it in a very strange place. Deeron, as his second-in-command, had accompanied him to a meeting with a respected narn leader, one of the Kha'Ri, who had had dealings with the humans before and during the war. It had not been a pleasant meeting. In the narn's eyes Deeran had seen the same contempt to which she was rapidly becoming accustomed. Still, at least he had been willing to speak with them.

"You say you are looking to restore your honour," he had said. "but as it is, honour would be useless to you. It would be like building a house on quicksand. No matter how strong you build it, it will always collapse, because it lacks a foundation. It is that foundation that you need to look for."

"And what is that foundation?" Kalain had asked.

"[[Absolution]]," the narn answered, pronouncing the strange word with some difficulty. "It was a human concept, part of one of their major religions. They would go to a priest, a religious leader, and confess to him the things that they had done wrong. If the priest believed that a person was truly penitent, he would set a penalty and then grant this [[absolution]], which meant that the sin was forgiven and the soul was once again clean. I think it describes what you seek. Unfortunately, I doubt any human priest would be willing to grant it, even if you could find one. People tend to carry grudges, you know?"

Little else had been said and the meeting ended soon after. Still, Kalain had found the answer he was looking for. Something in the narn's words had resonated with his own world view. This was to be their mission, to find the forgiveness that would remove the taint that seemed to lie over their souls and allow the minbari to start over. And, since it was the humans that had been sinned against, it was their forgiveness that he needed to seek. As a task it was not quite as hopeless as it seemed, but it came close. During the war there had been rumours that the humans had send part of their population into hiding. Afterwards the minbari fleet had searched for them but without much hope. Space was very large and the humans had wiped out all traces of where the ships had gone, if they had ever existed. Still, if these ships had made it to their unknown destination, there might still be humans out there, and if there were, Kalain could find them, even if it meant searching the galaxy one planet at a time.

So, Kalain had taken the Trigati into exile, visiting star system after star system in a never ending search to find the human refugees. Months had turned into years and years into decades, but Kalain had never given up, until he passed away. Upon his death, Deeron had taken command of the Trigati and continued the search, though she herself was growing old. By now most of the people who had taken part in the war had died. In one of the rare messages they had received from home she had learned that Satai Delenn, the youngest of those that had led the minbari in their holy war, had passed away in an isolated monastery, where she had spend most of her life after resigning from the Grey Council. Soon, Deeron knew, it would be her turn. Sometimes she wondered what would happen when the last of the Trigati's crew passed away. But it didn't really matter. They had programmed the ship to return to minbari space, once the last living being on board had died. There the people would be able to recover the ship and find the journal of her quest. Who knew? Maybe someone else would pick up where they had left off and carry on the search.

Deeron looked out into the ever-changing patterns of hyperspace.

"Are you out there?" she whispered. "If so, I hope you have found peace, but I don't think that we ever will."

Sineval, Kalain and Deeron were characters that appeared in the episode 'Points of Departure', which also inspired the title