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Disclaimer: Ranma and the Nerima Wrecking Crew belong to Rumiko Takahashi while Rifts and Nightspawn belong to Palladium. Babylon 5, Nightspawn and Sailormoon belong to all their creators respectively.


Part 10: Vendetta

"And the human vessel opened fire on what it perceived to be an act of hostility from the aliens."

-Archivist 2480.

Explosions rang throughout the crystalline structure of the alien ship damaging it … a little. Fortunately, there were no casualties aboard that ship during that incident except for one. Unfortunately, for everyone concerned (especially Earth Alliance), that one person who died happened to be Dukhat, a key figure in the Minbari Federation, which did more harm to Earth-Minbari relations than the destruction of a hundred Minbari warships. The response was immediate … and profound … from the Minbari.

"DIE HUMAN SCUM!" came the cry of righteous indignation. Like a mother who had just witnessed the death of her child at the hands of some murderer, the Minbari reacted with deadly force. Within days of the Dukhat Incident, a thousand Minbari warships set sail through hyperspace for the human territories of Earth Alliance. Unfortunately, for the humans and everyone else concerned, the Minbari war fleet did not differentiate between Earth Alliance humans and the Exiled Humans.

As far as the Minbari were concerned, all humans were the same whether they were Earth Alliance, Exiles, young, old, infirmed, weak, strong, healthy, sickly, males, females, black, white or yellow (or whatever colour they wanted to be).

And since they were the same, they all deserved the same fate - death at the hands of the righteous Minbari. Ignorance was not an excuse so it didn't matter if the human knew about the incident or not. All it mattered was that they were human and they deserved to die. Thus, the Minbari went about their grim task vigorously.

Let's not get it wrong here. The Minbari as a whole are not an evil race. They were just reclusive, self-righteous (tend to treat the other sentient races with a holier-than-thou attitude except for the Vorlons), honourable (from their point of view, of course^_^), elitist and rigid in their mindset and culture (similar to the Japanese society in the days of the Shogun). They held an unwavering loyalty to their leaders and carried out their appointed tasks with a sense of devotion and cammaderie quite uncommon even among the Younger races.

Yet it was those qualities that very nearly caused them into driving the human race into extinction. Ironically, it was the Earth-Minbari War that caused the Global Civil War between Earth Alliance and the Terran Exiles under the Decahedron Compact to come to an end. Survival was more important than bringing the "lost" sheep back into the fold, after all. Even President Morgan Clark of Earth Alliance was smart enough to call off the war with the Exiles as the war with the Minbari drew to the forefront (survival tends to make strange bedfellows^_^).

The war was going badly for both Earth Alliance and the Terran Exiles as Minbari warships penetrated deeper into human territory. It was a war for the survival of the human race and everyone knew it. The Minbari were not taking prisoners. They sterilised entire worlds of its population once they took over never once responding to any pleas of mercy or gestures of peace from the human populace.

Another Exile ship blew up into smithereens, courtesy of a shot from a Minbari war cruiser. A Nial fighter flew by, opening fire on a Whitestar, destroying it before moving to another target. It destroyed another three EA fighters before an Earth Alliance fighter flew into it, gutting both ships in the process, reducing the enemy fleet by one ship.

On board a hidden ship from the scene of battle …

"We need better weapons, Sir. The Minbari have better ships and outnumber both the combined fleets of Earth Alliance and ours by more than three to one."

"Do you have a way out of this, Damora?" a voice said studying the scene of carnage from the bridge.

"Look out the window." She replied.

Alexander did so. There was a ripple in the darkness of space before them and the outline of a massive ship appeared out of it.

Most of the crewmembers on board the stealth ship drew in their breath at the sight of the large vessel.

For a moment or two, it remained transparent before solidifying into a dark grey metal-like colour punctuated with blue glows and white highlights in certain spots across its long body.

"Behold the Salvation of the human race. It will now engage the Minbari," the green-haired vampire replied.

The large ship faded from sight like it was never there.



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The Minbari are an ancient and mysterious race … by human standards at any rate. If one assumed that with age comes wisdom, one would only have to look at one’s history to be proven wrong.

When the first contact between human and Minbari happened, it brought about the Earth-Minbari war which nearly ended in the complete destruction of the human race. Weakened already by the splinter group of Earth colonies that formed the Decahedron Compact, Earth Alliance was in no way ready to fight, much less stop the mighty Minbari war machine.

Still the humans did have a number of ace cards that the Minbari and even they were not aware of. First and foremost was the Guardian of Time and her plans for Crystal Tokyo (which she had never truly given up on despite the odds against it happening). Second was the fact that the Minbari were just another playing piece in a power game between forces of unknown origin.

That this war, being waged by them, against the humans was just one prime example of being manipulated by outside forces into doing a job for free never occurred to them.

That it was going to be the humans and the Minbari who were going to do all the bleeding, hurting and the dying on a grand scale in the war never crossed their minds.

That in the end, it was going to be the Minbari and the humans suffering like never before never even registered in their thick skulls.

Such was the price of ignorance, pride, stupidity and bull-headedness. An eye for an eye, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth, such was the Minbari credo and way of life (though in the case of the Minbari, it was more like a thousand eyes for an eye, a thousand ears for an ear, a thousand teeth for a tooth). They conveniently forgot the next part that made the credo complete.

An eye for an eye, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth and the whole world becomes blind, deaf and toothless.


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