I don't own Babylon 5, although I prefer writing alternate reality Babylon 5 stories as there is something more satisfying about writing them than stories which are canonical, I do own this story and the series its a part of. I hope you enjoy this latest chapter. Enjoy and please let me know what you think.
The Beginning of the Age of Raiders.
Captain Morris sat rigidly in his command chair as he listened to the report from the minelayers who were coming back out of hyperspace before half of the job was done. The minelayers had come out of hyperspace in a hurry while they burnt through their fuel reserves so they could come out with the news.
They had been ambushed by a squadron of Minbari fighters.
The fighters had quickly engaged against the Starfuries sent into hyperspace for protection and for long-range patrol while the minelayers had gotten to work on dropping the bombs off so then they could be primed for detonation; both sides had obeyed the unspoken agreement between the interstellar powers to never engage one another in a hyperspace battle for too long, but while the pilots of the Earth fighters had been more than pleased with the chance of finally having an even playing field against the Minbari, they didn't relish the idea of being stuck in hyperspace while the energy surges which were likely already being whisked into action by the energy weapons of both sides pulled them further into that domain by the gravity inclines which tended to slam into spaceships like a tidal wave and be washed down further into hyperspace.
Morris shuddered at the thought of that happening. He had even seen it happen a few times when he had been a pilot during the Dilgar war, and he had been lucky to even get out so he had little hesitation in ordering the fighters out of there.
"There's still a minelayer in there, Captain," one of the commanders of the minelayers was currently telling him, and Morris needed a few seconds to get back in the thick of the conversation. "We can't get through to them, but the Minbari have likely crippled it."
Morris sighed. If that were true then the entire Minbari Federation would likely know by now something was going on, after all, it was very rare for races to mine the hyperspace area around one of their own solar systems. He only hoped it didn't make the Minbari commanders redouble their efforts to get closer to Earth, but he knew that was a definite. The Minbari would be coming, but now it would only be a matter of when. "How far did you get with the minelaying?"
The commander shrugged. "We were laying down the mines at different points of the compass and at different rates; I don't know for sure how many of the damn things are in there now, but there are dozens. But we were only halfway through with the procedure before the Minbari fighters showed up."
Morris nodded and schooled his expression so the captain of the minelayer did not see how despondent he now felt. "Get as far from the 'gate as possible; we're gonna blow it up."
"But, sir-."
"We don't have any choice!" Morris snapped, already feeling terrible for what he knew he would inevitably have to do even if it meant sacrificing the lives of EarthForce personnel, but it was also because he knew what the other captain was going to say, and he hated himself for it. "I don't want to detonate anything, but we have a colony we are trying to evacuate; every minute brings them closer to being massacred. Prepare the mines for detonation."
With that Morris made a 'cutting' motion with his hand, so then he wouldn't have to face the shock on the face of the other captain.
This was one of those moments he hated being a captain in the Earth Alliance fleet; he was expected to make the big decisions which would tell people if they would live or if they would die, and he hated that, he hated feeling like he was a chess master; it was so easy for him to see everyone and everything at his disposal as being expendable.
To his side, his executive officer stood with her hands folded behind her back. Morris stared at her, seeing for himself the expression on her face. The two of them were long-time friends and veterans of EarthForce, and he could see why she was unhappy it was more than just worried about the crew of the minelayer.
"What's wrong, Carol?" He was already dreading the answer.
"There's a riot down there on the planet," she said.
Morris groaned. "You can't be serious?"
Sometimes he wondered what the hell was wrong with the human race; they were in the middle of a war, they had told the planetary government of the dangers and what the senate wanted, and now they had some hotheaded idiots down there raising hell when they were supposed to board their ships for the one way trip into Underspace.
"I wish I was joking, believe me, but the reports from the GROPO detachment sent down there have said its a fuck up."
Morris sighed, ignoring the lack of protocol Carol had just used in addressing him. "What set it off?" He asked, not even sure he wanted to know.
"Someone apparently didn't like the way someone else was looking at him, and it started off from there," Carol shook her head, amazed by the stupidity of the people down there. "It's bad enough the Minbari are really close to us now. All they need to do is come out of hyperspace, and shoot our ships down, and all those idiots would do is punch themselves to death."
"They're terrified. They're terrified they're going to all be killed, so they feel the need to lash out," Morris shook his head as he tried to guess what the thought was behind this. "Order our people down there to get it sorted out, tell them why. We need to get those ships into Underspace now."
"Aye, sir. Should the colony know?"
Morris played with the question in his mind, weighing the pros and the cons of the entire colony knowing about the impending Minbari attack. On the one hand, if they knew then it might make them board the evacuation shuttles quicker so then they could all leave. But at the same time, with there being a riot on the planet down below because a bunch of idiots with far too much pent up energy and too much aggression, it would likely create a storm of panic on the planet below, and that was the last thing they needed.
"No," Morris eventually decided, "just tell our people. But tell them to keep it quiet, and tell them if they do, everyone would panic and they'd never be able to complete the mission."
Carol nodded and hurried off to deliver the order, leaving Morris behind wondering just how long it would take to evacuate the colony. A part of him regretted not telling them about the ships found in hyperspace, and he wondered just how their people on the planet would get it sorted.
XXX
Willis glared at the rioters and turned to his privates. "Break it up!" He screamed over the noise. "Break it up! We have to get the lot of these ungrateful bastards on the ships! Do you wanna die 'cause we were trapped because of those bone-headed sons of bitches! Don't just stand there!"
The privates jumped at the sound of his scream, and they Sergeant Willis cursed the EarthForce bastards, and he wished he could drag the stupid commander of this expedition to evacuate the colony. It was so typical of EarthForce, really. Willis, despite being a member of the organisation through the GROPOS division, had never truly seen those idiots as part of the same group, somehow. It could have been because while they enjoyed space combat and exploration missions, but as far as Willis was concerned it was the GROPOS who were the ones who won battles and ended up cleaning up the inevitable mess left by those idiots.
This was the ultimate proof in Willis' mind that EarthForce had screwed up massively this time; not only had they screwed the first contact up with the Minbari, but they hadn't bothered evacuating the colonies until now, which was the last minute. Instead of devoting more time to the colonial evacuation, which should have happened just as the Minbari launched their war and began moving through the outer colonies, EarthForce and the senate had waited until the last minute to evacuate them and now this.
Not only were the colonists down on this fucked up planet rioting like mad for reasons which made no sense whatsoever, but now there were Minbari ships in hyperspace. They were now so close they were only right around the corner.
Willis sent a long annoyed look towards the fighting crowd and he kept shouting at his privates who were trying to break it up. "Hurry up, you bastards!" He yelled again, his sizeable lungs generating enough of a yell to make the colonists jump in shock but he didn't care about them.
One of the colonists yelled at him, and another one, yelling insults at the GROPOS, threw a glass bottle at one of the troops. The bottle smashed into tiny shards all over the armour of the GROPOS. Willis wasn't surprised when the trooper turned around and shot the offending colonist to the ground.
Willis, likewise, took out his own PPG and fired it at the other colonist.
Everyone shut up and looked in shock at the dead bodies, but Willis decided he didn't care one little bit about the orders. "Up there, in hyperspace right now are Minbari ships," he barked. "And all you stupid bastards are doing is holding us up. Now, you are going to all board these ships. And you will do it in an orderly manner. If you don't, the ones who cause problems will be shot, and the one next to you will be shot. Do you understand?"
The colonists looked at each other and they quickly arranged themselves into a nice orderly line. One of the Earthforce officers walked over to him, looking stunned and indignant. "Have you gone insane?" He hissed. "You've disobeyed orders-!"
"Shut up. As far as I'm concerned, I got everyone moving, and if the death of a small group of people gets us all away before those bastard boneheads arrive, who cares?" Willis knew he might have kissed his career goodbye, but this was happening all over the Alliance that nobody truly cared anymore.
"I will report this to Captain Morris-," the officer went on.
Willis knew what the officer was the moment he took a longer look at him. Young, probably one of those new planetary draft recruits which meant he was a long way from knowing how Earthforce actually worked instead of spending the normal number of years at the Academy. But his mind was still that of a High School kid, who'd likely been nothing more than an arrogant swot who saw the world in black and white.
If this kid thought tattling on others when so many were dying was a good move, well he shouldn't have signed up. Willis honestly did not know and frankly, he didn't give a fuck if the kid had only joined because he wanted to show himself as a man of action; chances were he wouldn't see action and had only been sent down here with them to supervise although he was as useful as a newspaper editor studying Scientology.
"Go ahead," Willis shrugged.
"What? You're not gonna stop me?"
"No. You see what we did just now has been happening all over what's left of the Alliance. Did you know that? If those bastards in the senate had bothered to take the threat of those alien fuckers more seriously and evacuated the colonies, so many people wouldn't have died. But now we are evacuating, everyone is rioting because they don't want to leave home and they're scared. Instead of doing as they're told they're acting like animals; what did they think we were gonna do?"
"But we shouldn't kill them!" The boy protested.
Willis was torn between shooting this little bastard or just walking off to make sure the colonists were doing as they were told. While he was a little bit concerned with what he'd done, Willis knew Morris wouldn't do anything since it was happening all the time. When the first colonists were shot by their own soldiers because someone had become so tired of being shouted at and someone had smashed something on their head or shot them - Willis had forgotten the details, Earthdome had almost gone mad, but then it had happened again as other soldiers became tired of the stupidity and high ranking officers ordered their men to shoot at a few colonists and then cram them into the ships like sardines in a can. It was inhumane, even by human standards, but their people were being massacred.
At the same time a large part of him agreed with the kids' opinion on the matter; he hated having to kill people, their own people when there were three filthy alien races about to wipe them out or enslave them, it was hard to tell with the Narns or the Centauri, but since both races had that MO it seemed likely to happen. But at the same time, Willis wondered how everyone could be so stupid.
"Not unless we're forced to," Willis growled.
At that moment, the boy's link chirped. "Yes?" Willis could see the boy gearing up to report to whoever was calling him about what had happened just now, but before he could open his mouth, the officer on the other end of the line spoke before he managed to even get a syllable out.
"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GET EVERYONE ON THE SHIPS - NOW! THE MINBARI ARE COMING! REPEAT - THE MINBARI ARE COMING!"
XXX
"Detonate the mines in the outer areas near those ships," Morris ordered, his heart pounding with panic while he looked at the HUD in horror as the Minbari ships emerged from the hyperspace vortexes; they had jumped in shortly after the gate had been blown and the signal had been sent in to detonate the bombs inside the nearby hyperspace region but some of the Minbari had had the foresight to jump back into normal space. There were only two Minbari warships, but they were more than enough to destroy everything human in this solar system, and judging from what he could see of them - the blackened damage to their armoured hulls, and the unsteady way one of the ships was moving through space like a man limping down a street - Morris was willing to bet however long he had left of his life, the Minbari on those ships were not only hurt, they were seething with fury.
The Minbari were firing all over the solar system, the emerald green energy beams of their weapons blazing indiscriminately and seemingly randomly, but he could see flashes here and there. Nuclear flashes which sent out incredibly powerful waves of energy.
Carol looked up, her expression full of fear. "The Minbari haven't fallen for it. They're shooting at anything they might think is a mine."
"Fuck!" Morris made a face before he clamped a hand to his forehead, lost in thought for a moment while he tried to think. First things first. "How many ships are there still on the planet?"
Carol took a check. She sighed in frustration which made Morris know he wasn't going to like the answer before Carol even opened her mouth.
"Too many."
"That's not exactly a good answer, Commander," Morris put an edge in his tone, one which warned Carol not to give vague replies.
"There are still 6,000 people down there, sir, including our own people," Carol's voice was tinged with annoyance and worry, emotions which he himself felt.
"Damn colonists; why can't they see they're putting everyone's life in danger?" Morris grumbled.
Carol just watched him grimly. She knew he was angrier with the bigger situation than anything else. Like many other people in the Earth Alliance, Morris and Carol were both mystified by why they were evacuating their people when it should have been done long before in advance, although they had evacuated a few of the colonies beforehand, it all felt so last minute.
On top of that their enemies seemed to be multiplying, and so many of their people were missing or dead.
"I think there's only one thing we can do," Morris' voice snapped her back. He walked closer to her and whispered, "We have the TOMTIT equipment installed, don't we?"
"We do, but it's experimental," Carol had been on one of the ships fighting against the Minbari when they'd been destroyed by nukes which had been teleported into space, and she had been one of the officers who'd listened and watched as Carnahan had looked on the verge of tears when he had told them about his invention which he hadn't planned to be a weapon of war, one of many new scientific discoveries which had found its way into the armoury.
"But we have it?" Morris insisted.
"Yes."
Morris sighed. "Okay. Prep three nukes, keep another four more in reserve in case it doesn't work the first time around. Use the manual lock; dunno why so few people bothered to use them in the early part of the war. Beam the bombs close to the cruisers."
"Aye, sir," Carol turned to relay the order to the teleportation chamber while Morris turned to the tactical officer. "Anything from the surface?" He asked.
"Three of our shuttles are coming out of the atmosphere now," the officer reported.
Morris closed his eyes and groaned at the stupidity of their timing. "Tell the pilots to stay there; we don't want the Minbari to send off any transmissions through hyperspace, letting them know of the Underspace. They might have suspicions of something going on, but we're not going to let them know they're right."
"Aye sir," Morris didn't hear the officer's reply. No, his eyes were focused on the HUD as the Minbari were coming closer and closer. Morris frowned when he caught sight of a number of fighters swarming around the cruisers like a swarm of nasty hornets waiting to sadistically sting anything they didn't like to die.
"Why don't you attack?" He whispered to himself, wondering if the Minbari were hiding something, some serious damage to their warships which they didn't want to expose to their enemies.
"Can we get a secondary target lock on those ships?" Morris asked, wondering if that was it.
The tactical officer looked at him quizzically. "Er, sir, you know the Minbari have some kind of stealth-."
"Just check it will you?"
Stunned by the sharp bark, the officer quickly got to work. "Their stealth system is fluctuating, sir," he went on in surprise, looking up at Morris in surprise as if wondering how he'd known. "It's coming on but their systems must be so badly damaged from the destruction of the gate, and the mines blowing up in hyperspace, they can't completely camouflage their ships."
Morris grinned in triumph. "Order all ships of the squadron to lock onto the Minbari," he ordered. "Target whatever areas are fluctuating, and just fire."
"Aye, sir."
Morris took a deep breath. "Fire when ready," he ordered.
His link chirped. "Yes?" He spoke into it.
"Sir, the TOMTIT is ready," Carol's voice came over the link.
"Carol, the stealth of the Minbari ships are fluctuating, but we're still going to use the TOMTIT system to deliver the payload. I want every Minbari here in this solar system to be killed. All of them."
"Aye, sir."
Morris grinned. "Carol, this is what I want you to do, now listen to me-."
XXX
Shai Alyt Brammer of the Star Rider's clan cursed under his breath as he struggled to keep on his feet while he stood in the Tactical Centre of his war cruiser. The holographic bubble surrounding him and enclosing around him and showing the entire vista of this sorry corner of the galaxy, of the rapidly shrinking Earth Alliance, was fluctuating badly as the damage Ingata had taken since the humans had mined hyperspace and had even been insane enough to destroy the local Jumpgate made it hard for the specialised holographic system to operate properly and he was prepared to return to the bridge despite the fact he'd be diverting half of his concentration between reports of his crew, and on the battle, if it could be called that.
"Shai Alyt, the humans have detected our fluctuating stealth fields; they are intensifying their firepower."
Brammer grimaced at the officer's need to state the Valen-be damned obvious. "Of course they would; I have said it once, I've said it a thousand times, the humans are adaptable and when they spot an advantage, they take it."
"They are also barbarians for what they've done to the Jumpgate," the officer pointed out. Brammer had to admire the officer's lack of fear when addressing a superior. That was the problem with Minbari, really; everyone was afraid of saying the wrong thing, they didn't even open their mouths when such a reply came to the tips of their tongue.
"Maybe, and that's concerning; the humans need the Jumpgates much like everybody else in the galaxy does, for map references, so why destroy them like this?" Brammer was merely repeating a question so many others had been asking for a while now, but while there were strange rumours and ideas out there, they didn't have any proof of what the humans were doing.
But he was cursing the fighter pilots lack of common sense or subtlety for alerting the humans to their presence, especially since it only cost more lives than it needed. Thanks to them and their desire for more human blood on their hands, the pilots had gone on their own initiative and attacked the humans and now their fleet had been destroyed or lost in the blast, and Brammer and his crew and the crew of the second ship and the fighter pilots were trapped here until the Worker Caste opened a new Jumpgate here.
The deck rocked. "Fire all weapons on the human ships; take all power from the stealth system and reroute it to the cannons, its useless now anyway so what difference does it make?"
"Understood!" Brammer was relieved the Minbari who'd spoken to him with such attitude beforehand was intelligent enough to not question his orders, or drop a truly unnecessary remark.
Brammer couldn't help but feel sad when he saw the energy beams of their fusion cannons strike several of the human ships and fighters, blowing them to pieces. Unlike many warriors, Brammer had never been happy with the war despite being lost in the bloodlust of the conflict, but since Lenonn's death under mysterious circumstances the had thrown himself back into the conflict until he had become one of the most vicious warriors fighting in the conflict. However, nowadays Brammer just wanted the fighting to stop although many Warriors wanted to keep fighting until the planets in this part of the galaxy were red and bleeding with human blood. He knew it would not be easy to stop the war, although Delenn herself had told him the Ranger One had been trying to negotiate with humans, Brammer had bluntly asked Delenn, one of his longtime friends, why on Minbar the humans would want to continue their conflict when many assumed the humans, proving their savagery, had deliberately sabotaged the peace talks. It made little sense, but then so many things about this war didn't make sense.
As he looked at the death happening all around him, Brammer had to use every scrap of self-control he had learnt during his entire life in the Religious caste before he had moved to the Warrior class to stop himself breaking down in despair. So much death, so much pointless waste of life. Many a time he had wondered to himself what had come over Delenn, and why she didn't even try to stop it.
A treacherous part of his mind wondered if Delenn even wanted to make peace with the humans in the first place.
"Shai Alyt!"
Brammer stiffened when he heard the panic in the officer's voice while he could see there was nothing outwardly wrong in the space around them. And then he saw it. Somethings appearing in space.
Brammer could hear the report, but he was never meant to hear it finish when there were flashes of light and there was a roaring rumbling sound inside the ship itself, and then everything went dark.
XXX
Carol threw up her hand to block the flashes from blasts of the nukes. She sensed she wasn't the only one; she sensed rather than saw movement from her captain and her fellow soldiers. When the flashes faded, Carol lowered her hand and looked at the Minbari cruisers. Or rather the tiny shards of debris which had once been two Minbari war cruisers and a number of fighters.
Despite smiling with relief she had destroyed the ships with nuclear bombs teleported onboard, Carol wished there had been another way…
"We won't have any problems from the Minbari in a hurry," Morris said, turning to her. "Carol, send a message to our evacuation teams down there; tell them the Minbari are gone but make it clear I want to be out of here by dawn tomorrow morning."
"Aye sir," Carol wondered about the time, but she gathered the captain had only issued the command for them to be seen as generous. She wasn't sure, personally, but she had to admit the more time they had the easier it would be to evacuate the colonists. As she went to relay the order to the ground personnel, Carol wondered what the Minbari would do next. They likely knew about the destruction and loss of their fleet (she guessed some of the Minbari had survived and had been washed away by the hazardous hyperspace tides; she didn't care and she knew nobody else would either), or they would soon. The Minbari had proven to be predictable; they thought humans were savage barbarians, and whenever they had lost a battle or many of their ships were destroyed, they came back with a vengeance.
Carol only hoped they hadn't set more innocent lives up to be massacred by a bunch of brutal Minbari warriors, but she had the feeling that was what was precisely going to happen to their people.
Hope you've enjoyed it.
Until the next time readers.