Title: On The Line
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jeffrey Sinclair.
Rating: G
Word Count: 473
Spoilers: And The Sky Full Of Stars.
Summary: The Minbari fight honourably, but that doesn’t mean they’re above setting traps for their enemies.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 274: It's A Trap.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.



From everything Sinclair had seen during the war, the Minbari fought honourably, insofar as anything to do with war and killing could be termed honourable.

They weren’t given to sneak attacks; they confronted their enemies head-on. They could afford to; their ships and weapons were more powerful than anything earth had at its disposal, and they had some kind of technology that prevented the targeting systems of earth vessels from locking on to their cruisers. The best earth could manage was to pick off some off the small and agile Minbari fighters, and they missed more of those than they hit.

Earth’s one real victory in the war had been when the Minbari flagship Black Star was lured into a trap, a mined asteroid field, and destroyed. It was never going to be enough to save earth, which was why Sinclair was here, now, with every other pilot and ship earth had at its disposal, trying to hold the line even though there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell they could halt the Minbari fleet.

Setting traps for one’s enemy was the earth way, but maybe the Minbari had taken note, because when their fighters moved in and Mitchell told Sinclair he had a Minbari on his tail, the only thing Sinclair could think was, “It’s a trap.” How he hated being right; he looked up and the sky was filled with Minbari warships. He tried to warn Mitchell, but he wouldn’t listen, he’d always been impulsive, and then it was too late. He tried to eject, but…

Before his eyes Sinclair’s squadron were picked off one by one, he heard their screams through the open comm. lines, and then he was alone, a vast Minbari cruiser bearing down on his tiny Starfury. He tried to ram it, knowing it was a useless gesture; he was no ore than a tiny gnat going up against an eagle, and all the while he kept expecting to be blown apart, but it never happened.

He must have blacked out because the next thing he knew, it was twenty-four hours later, he was drifting helplessly, his ship disabled, and the war was over. The Minbari had surrendered.

None of it made sense. Earth had been doomed, there’d been no way out, the destruction of the human race inevitable, and now the whole planet was celebrating an impossible victory.

Something had happened between the moment the last of his squadron was destroyed and the time he woke up, Sinclair just didn’t know what. He might never know. He should have been relieved, even jubilant like the rest of the planet, but at the back of his mind he couldn’t help wondering if maybe this too might be some kind of trap, and they’d never know until it closed around them. He hoped to God he was wrong.


The End