A/N: This is based on my first ever SRatSS plot hedgehog that was born almost 20 years ago. Parts of the plot are long forgotten, but the basic idea remained and some sub-plots still influence my SRatSS fics today.

Dear Fireball,

Please don't mistake this address for irony. You are and always were very dear to me and more than anything else it was you that made me hesitate before executing my plans. If it had been only about myself I might have abandoned the plan entirely even though I had been working on its execution for a decade.

Surprised? Yes, I was just a boy when I hatched the plan and set the first steps towards its execution. Of course no mere child could have come up with something so complex and in fact the conspiracy was much wider than Cavalry Command realises even now. Yes, conspiracy, I say, for as I indicated above I had help. I was the head and main player in this, but by far not the most influential or even highest ranking.

I didn't position all of my players. We had our claws deep inside the New Frontier's defence forces long before I was old enough to be involved. I did not make most of my contacts, though I placed my agents to strengthen old ties.

It would put their lives at risk to tell you the names of those whose cover has not yet been blown so it must suffice to say that mostly they were friends and allies of my real father, like Lucien the pirate king.

They went to school together, my father and Lucien, were trained to be special agents together, but while Lucien became the leader of an elite team, my father did not make the cut and had to watch them leave without him. It was a great disappointment to my father and his greatest shame, those who were close to him tell me, and it remained a sore spot even after it turned out that their commanders had betrayed Lucien and his team. They were branded as traitors for following orders and successfully removing a threat to the New Frontier's political influence in Jar.

How ironic that my father longed to share their fate anyway, for though he obediently fought Lucien on many missions for Cavalry Command, in death he joined him and his team on the list of the greatest traitors humanity has ever known. His crime, you ask? The inability to defend a small planet against the unexpected attack of overwhelming forces that according to intelligence reports should not have been there. But then according to Cavalry Command to this day, there was no attack. I suppose it must have been my father's own small ship that blew up all the planetary defences and several cities and finally, on a whim, itself. There remains the mystery how they could have fired ammunition they had no suitable guns for or why they would have stolen more valuables than the ship could carry, if they intended to blow themselves up, but alas anything is better than admitting that you were attacked by a foe you do not wish to fight.

I see their point really. The war would have been long and bloody and we didn't have sufficient forces present at that border to take on such a large force.

But it was my father who was given the blame for it when he was no longer able to defend himself. Some tried to defend his honour anyway. They were silenced, most of them by orders or threats, some by death. My mother was sent to a mental hospital and my sister and I became wards of Cavalry Command, the unwanted children of two traitors.

Ah yes, you didn't know I had a sister until she blew up the command base on Alamo, did you? And you thought you'd met my parents, but you were wrong. The Riders are not and never were my family, nor is Saber Rider actually my name. It is a cover identity, though the adoption was quite official. I was getting good grades and turning out to be useful, so I was rewarded with a family while my sister was not. Perhaps they thought to separate us to break that last true family bond we had. The action would have come too late anyway.

By the time I was adopted I had already met ... but no, saying anything at all about the one who told me of my parents' fate and put me in contact with ... others who had known them would put his life in danger. I had met him, though, and we'd started to put the conspiracy together and I had also met the one you know as Jesse Blue. He was another ward of Command, you see, two years younger than myself, but raised with us anyway and he soon became my best friend. The accidental result of a female agent's attempt to infiltrate an Outrider base he'd been abandoned by his mother at birth.

That doesn't sound like he'd have been much use, I guess, but Outrider family bonds are tight and with the help of my pirate allies I was able to put him in contact with relatives who actually wanted him. Just how important for our plans the alliance with Nemesis would be I didn't realise until their first attack, of course, but at that point our plans started to come together.

By the time I met you and Colt all my agents except Jesse and my sister had been placed and as you know Jesse followed soon after. I could not leave them hanging, nor could I leave my parents unavenged, or trust the ones who rewarded their and Lucien's services so badly.

I am glad to hear that you survived the destruction of Yuma, though and I hope you can someday find it in yourself to forgive me. Please extend my well-wishes to Colt and April, they were innocent bystanders in all this. And do inform Commander Eagle that they are wasting their time looking for Lucien and me in the delta sector. We are by now in the Vapour Zone enjoying the generous hospitality of Jesse's extended family.

I also recommend that you leave Cavalry Command before they turn on you as they did on my father. Now, after all the horrors you have seen is a good time to resign without drawing unwanted attentions. If you tell them this life is not for you and you would like to return to your racing career, they will not be suspicious. I would hate to see you betrayed or killed in battle.

Still your friend

Neil