I don't own Babylon 5.
Enjoy.
From Commander to Ambassador.
Jeffrey Sinclair had become used to the upheavals which came with being an officer in Earthforce; it was an occupational hazard that came with wearing the uniform. Sometimes you were assigned at the last minute to be a squadron commander or the second under the commander of another squadron commander, sometimes you could be assigned to a role on a starship, a starbase or a planetary base.
It could happen so suddenly that it took your breath away. One of the biggest upheavals and a prime example in Sinclairs' life was when the war with the Minbari broke out. Like everyone else, Sinclair had been stunned out of his wits when the war was declared when the Minbari methodically began cutting a path of murder, destruction, boasting a technology and a cold determination which exceeded that of the Dilgar.
Earth had only won a handful of victories, not due to their technology or skill, but mostly because they had caught the Minbari off guard. It hadn't made any difference, of course; the Minbari had launched an all-out attack on Earth itself, bypassing the colonies on Mars and Io to strike at the homeworld itself with the clear plan of destroying humanity's ancestral home before focusing on cleaning up the remaining humans for the death of Dukhat.
Planned and led by Brammer, and watched and monitored by the Grey Council, the Minbari were preparing for the so-called final victory, although it was more of the slaughter of a species who had made an honest to God mistake.
Only the ending of the war had gone out in a way nobody expected, including Sinclair; while the memory was coming back and thanks to the clues which had been accumulating over the last year, Sinclair was still hazy about the details and what it all meant.
He remembered losing his fighter's weapons.
He remembered setting a collision course with the Minbari cruiser in front of him, looming above him as if he were a fish in front of a Mako shark while the larger predator was barely even aware of his presence; he only set the collision course because he had no other option with his weapons as effective as using a blade of grass to frighten off a grizzly bear.
He remembered being caught by the Minbari, dragged onto their ship… he remembered pain as the Minbari showed their lack of regard for any kind of good treatment towards their prisoners…. He remembered a dark room with figures in grey running around, while he was being held upright forcibly while he tried to recover from the beating he had been given, and his headache from the ungentle scans of the Minbari telepaths, and he recalled a slight figure, also wrapped in grey, holding some kind of triangle with a technological gem in the centre. He remembered it glowing….and then he was back in his fighter and he received word the Minbari had surrendered.
The Earth-Minbari war, the war where he had been forced to listen along with hundreds of his colleagues and friends, forced to listen like so many people died as the Minbari warriors steamrolled their way through Earth Alliance space with the clear intention of wiping out the human race. Sinclair would later learn the Minbari, determined to destroy humanity had not merely been content with killing the people, they had also destroyed everything from buildings to works of art, books, and so many other things. There was no doubt in his mind the Minbari would have levelled every city on Earth so as to remove any trace of the historical achievements of mankind, destroying buildings like the Empire State Building, the Taj Mahal, the pyramids in Mexico, Egypt, and the historical sites in the Middle East and Asia. It all seemed like such a terrible waste, and an obscene atrocity to wipe out a civilisation and culture so completely.
Sinclair knew the Centauri had no problems with stamping down on a planet when they'd conquered it, but even they hadn't gone that far when they'd conquered worlds like Narn.
He also knew the Dilgar had also shown a similar viewpoint with the Minbari, but for a powerful race to go through with something that cruel…
What about the Earth's wildlife, animals like elephants, whales, crocodiles?
Had the Minbari planned on devastating Earth so badly the planet's crust would eventually no longer take the brunt of the bombardment that it would wipe out all life planet-side?
Sinclair hoped not, but he had spent the last few years working with Minbari diplomats before he became the commander of Babylon 5; he knew they had an overinflated view of themselves considering they had been in space for millennia, and they believed they had the right to decide if a race lived or died if they got on the wrong side of the Minbari. He hadn't liked it, but he knew it was a reality throughout the galaxy.
Sinclair had gone on with his career following the war, unable to remember the events between when he had been prepared to ram the Minbari ship head-on and when he had found the war was over, and he knew others were wondering why it had happened as well. When the Babylon Project was announced and what it was going to mean, and what it would do, Sinclair had welcomed it although he knew many wouldn't since the Minbari had awoken a bout of xenophobia in the human populace; you only had to look at it from humanity's point of view and what happened during the war.
The Minbari had killed hundreds of thousands of people, making it clear they would not stop until the last man, woman, and child of the human race was wiped out. General Lefcourt had made it clear in the very first month of the war that unless someone found a way of defeating the Minbari, humanity would be destroyed in the modern generation.
The thought was horrific.
Sinclair hadn't expected to have anything to do with the Babylon Project; he had just expected to get on with his life and career somewhere else, but he soon, to his surprise, selected as commander of Babylon 5, following the disappearance of Babylon 4. Sinclair hadn't been able to believe it, especially after the mess with Ben Zayn. Did the idiot really think that he, Sinclair had wanted to be commander of Babylon 5? He had never given it any thought, and yet the Minbari government, taking advantage of their agreements with Earth in the construction of the final Babylon station refused every single name until they produced his own. Sinclair had been surprised when Michael had come and told him what his investigations showed after Jeff told him what had happened at the Battle of the Line, what little he could remember.
But he was no longer commander of Babylon 5, and Michael according to his sources was still on life support in Med Lab after being shot in the back. Sinclair had not expected to be summoned back to Earth, but he had left the station in Susan's more than capable hands, and returned home.
And now he was being sent to Minbar, the first human ambassador. The good news was he'd learnt how to be a diplomat and an ambassador as part of his duties on Babylon 5, but he felt as if things were spiralling out of control following the mysterious assassination of President Santiago. He didn't understand why he was being summoned to Earth, he didn't understand why he had lost control and command of the station and was now being sent to Minbar as ambassador.
One thing he did worry about was how this would impact his plans to marry Catherine; he doubted she would want to live on Minbar. If Earth broke off his relationship which had been newly rekindled and mended, then he would never forgive them.