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- <title>Babylon 5 Universe: The Earth-Minbari War</title>
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- <h1>The Earth-Minbari War and the Battle of the Line</h1>
- <h3>Originally written by J. Michael Straczynski on GEnie</h3>
-
- <p>
- The Earth/Minbari war began as a misunderstanding. The first time a
- Terran ship encountered a Minbari starship, they studied each other closely.
- The Minbari ship made a move that they thought would be considered non-
- threatening. It wasn't. Even in the present of our story, no one is quite
- sure who fired first. The Minbari ship was greater in power, but taken by
- surprise, was destroyed, and the Earth ship limped back to base with tales of
- a terrible new enemy. Minbari ships, arriving to investigate, were
- interpreted to be the first wing of an invasion force by the base commander,
- and ships were launched in response before receiving formal authorization from
- Earth Central.
- <p>
- The war put a great strain on the Minbari, who have always been strongly
- divided between the religious caste, and the military caste, who were now
- forced to work together. The religious caste were quietly opposed to the war,
- but were generally vague about their reasons when asked.
-
- <p>
- The war went badly for Earth, with one loss after another; the Minbari had
- an overwhelming technological advantage. During the entire course of the war,
- Earth scored only one major victory, when a young officer named
- John Sheridan destroyed the Minbari war cruiser Black Star and
- several accompanying vessels. It was all downhill from there.
-
- <p>
- <h2><a name="line">The Battle of the Line</a></h2>
-
- The climax of the war was the Battle of the Line. Earth had all but lost
- the war. In a last-ditch attempt to save Homeworld, every available ship left
- in the armada was positioned around Earth itself. It was, everyone knew, a
- suicide mission. And that's, indeed, how the Battle of the Line started out
- to be.
- <p>
- <img src="/lurk/gif/008/line1.gif" align=middle> The Battle of the Line, from
- <a href="/lurk/guide/008.html">"And the Sky Full of Stars"</a>.
- <p>
- In the course of that battle, a lone ship -- a one-man fighter with very
- little in the way of armaments -- took several heavy hits. His instruments
- failing, other ships blowing up all around him, he aimed his ship at the
- nearest Minbari cruiser, deciding to ram it in the hopes of destroying at
- least that one ship. He kept his ship on course for as long as he could hold
- out. Then, abruptly, he blacked out.
- <p>
- When he awoke, he was still in his ship. Drifting. He fired up the
- engines, ready to continue, only to discover two things: first, that he had
- been out of it for a full 24 hours.
- <p>
- Second...the war was over.
- <p>
- <img align=right width=140 height=136 alt="" src="/lurk/gif/line_medal.gif">
- And, incredibly, the Minbari had surrendered. On the very verge of
- success in the war, they had rolled over and sued for peace. No one in the
- Earth Alliance quite knew why, but they weren't about to debate the issue, and
- accepted minimal compensation for the war.
- <p>
- Now, ten years later, the Earth Alliance is no closer to figuring out why
- the Minbari surrendered. It is, in fact, one of the great puzzles of that
- era, debated on a hundred different worlds. Only a few strange clues have
- slipped out. One is that the military genius who led the Minbari into the war
- committed suicide the day of the surrender, though it is unclear if his death
- took place before or after the surrender. And the rift between the military
- and religious castes apparently came to some sort of climax, with the
- religious caste taking complete control. There are rumors of some sort of
- religious vision, of a prophecy of great things, and a prophecy of complete
- doom. But since almost nothing is known of Minbari religion, what this might
- be, no one knows.
- <p>
- <img align=right width=80 height=100 alt="" src="/lurk/gif/chars/sinclair.gif">
- At the conclusion of the war, those Terrans who fought in the Battle of
- the Line were proclaimed heroes. One of these men was Jeffrey
- Sinclair...the pilot who still cannot account for the 24 hours he was out of
- contact with Earth Central. (cf.
- <a href="/lurk/guide/008.html">"And the Sky Full of Stars"</a>)
- <p>
- Commander Jeffrey Sinclair has come far in the 10 years since the war.
- He's had some rough times, but overall he's progressed. And he has at last
- been given a major assignment, perhaps the most important job of his life,
- concomitant with his promotion to Commander.
- <p>
- Command of the newly-built Babylon 5 space station.
-
-
- <pre>
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- <h5>
- Last update:
- October 8, 1995
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