The Minbari had swept all human resistance before them. Despite the valiant and heroic efforts of EarthForce, the Minbari seemed unstoppable. Desperate to delay the Minbari fleet steadily bearing down on the core human systems, Earthforce decided to take the offensive. Shortly before the war, Earthforce Exploration Command had been given the funds to build a new generation of exploration vessles. Explorer class ships were enormous, dwarfing anything else in the fleet. To test the huge engines and materials needed for this superstructure, Exploration Command had built a protoype hull. This half made skeleton of a ship was pressed into service for the offensive.

Cristened the Ulysses, engineers hastily made it battleworthy. Because of the size of the Ulysses it was to be a carrier. While it could carry a large number of Starfuries, Marines and breaching pods, it was slow and unmaneuverable. The plan was for the Ulysses to use its exploration equipment and long mission capability to approach the Mimbari worlds from an unexpected direction. There it would deploy the Starfuries in a series of hit and run attacks. The transponders and paint jobs would be periodically changed in an attempt to fool the Minbari into thinking that there was a whole squadron behind their lines. If possible, the marines were to land on colonies and cause as much trouble as possible. Hopefully the Minbari fleet would divert to protect their homeworlds from this feint. That was the plan anyway.

The Ulysses began the first leg of the jounney, jumping beyond human space. In hyperspace, they encountered a passenger ship (the 'Niven')in distress. Captain Wolf decided to rescue the freighter because this heroic rescue of aliens could bring more aid to the beleagured Earthforce. But because of the secrecy of the mission, Wolf had to be sure that the Ulysses itself was not seen. A rescue team shuttled across. There the rescue team had to repair the ship, deal with pannicked passengers, and try to chase down the assasin that was among them, and whose attack had caused the damage to the Niven in the first place. The Ulysses crew managed to get the Niven under control and replaced the Niven crew on the bridge so that they would not be able to observe the Ulysses with instruments.

Arriving at their destination, the Ulysses avoided the Drazi colony's jumppgate and used its jump engines to open a jump point from a safe distance. The Niven and the Ulysses returned to normal space, but to their horror and suprise a Minbari war cruiser was in the area! Before the Ulysses' jump engines could recharge, the Minbari attacked. Cleverly, the EF crew on the Niven claimed to be a civilian ship, and the Minbari ordered the Niven to stand down out of the battle range, they would be inspected shortly. The Ulysses launched its Starfury compliment, but was cut in half by the War Cruiser's beams. While the Minbari and Earthforce fighters duelled, the remains of the Ulysses launched its breaching pods full of marines in an attempt to board the War Cruiser.

Unfortunately, the War Cruiser disabled the breaching pods with an EMP pulse and drew the helpless pods in with a gravity tractor beam. That was a mistake: The valiant marines had taken the Ulysses' nuclear bombs, and they sacrificed themselves and the Ulysses to destroy the Mimbari ship. Only the Niven survived, which escaped to human space at best speed.

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