Black Star (Babylon 5)
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The Black Star (Drala Fi' in Minbari) was a Shargoti class warcruiser in the fictional science fiction universe of Babylon 5. Roughly 25% larger than the standard Sharlin Class Warcruiser, the Black Star served as the flag ship of the Minbari Federation fleet until its destruction in the year 2245.
During the course of the Earth-Minbari war,on September 30th 2245 the Black Star entered the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Commander John Sheridan, who takes command of the ship after captain Roger Stearns was killed, tried to halt the ship's advance, but nothing worked. Finally he decided to mine the asteroid belt with nuclear weapons, and used a fake distress signal to lure the ship into the belt as it was standard Minbari doctrine to ignore all surrender pleas and destroy all Earth war vessels without mercy, regardless of any fighting ability (or lack thereof) the Earth vessels may have had. Sheridan detonated his bombs, which destroyed the war cruiser.
The Black Star was the only warcruiser destroyed by the humans until that phase of the war, and was the only major human victory of the war. It did little to halt the Minbari advance. Peace talks were attempted after the destruction of the ship, but were sabotaged by the Centauri who assumed that the humans were attempting to ally with the Narns. The Minbari continued the fight until they surrounded Earth, at which point they stopped themselves from destroying Earth during the Battle of the Line.
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For the next ten years, many Minbari harbored a strong dislike of Sheridan, and called him the "Starkiller" because he destroyed the Black Star in a sneak attack (which they considered a dishonorable act). With the Shadow War heating up, the Minbari put aside their dislike, and joined with Sheridan to drive the Shadows from the galaxy. Near the end of the Shadow War, Sheridan would once again use the same tactics that he used against the Black Star. He seeded a number of asteroids in the Corianna system with nuclear weapons, and used these weapons to destroy a number of Vorlon and Shadow vessels.
