This wasn’t what Sheridan had wanted, he’d hoped to find a way to avoid having to fight against his own planet, his own people, but Clark made that impossible the moment he authorised Earth Alliance ships to fire on unarmed transports carrying civilian refugees. The slaughter of ten thousand people whose only crime was in trying to escape to safety was a war crime, there was no getting around that, and he simply could not let such an atrocity go unpunished, no matter what that meant.

So they would take the fight to earth, freeing the colonies along the way, starting with Proxima. All Sheridan hoped was that he could convince at least some of the Earth Alliance ships to stop and think, realise they didn’t have to obey the illegal orders they’d been given, that they could withdraw from the battles to come, or better yet, switch sides and join him in the fight to liberate earth and the colonies from Clark’s repressive dictatorship.

He knew there would be bloodshed, that lives would be lost on both sides, knew as well that once he took this step there’d be no turning back, but Clark had left him no choice.


The End