[ WP ] A peaceful alien race is besieged by another race in the same galaxy . As their last planets fall and their home-world comes under threat they do the unthinkable . They ask for aid from the only known creatures more brutal than their foes in exchange for FTL technology . Humans accept the deal .

We had n't announced anything, but we were losing. Badly. People could tell as more and more worlds were listed as `` temporarily unavailable due to background radiation'' at the wormhole stations. Technically not a lie. The Swarm's drones were mildly radioactive, synthesizing more mundane resources into the unnatural `` foods'' that allowed them to survive the vacuum of space, travel faster than light to new systems, rend our defense ships with atom-thin clawblades, and self-destruct with a fission reaction powerful enough to destroy small planetoids. 
 
 The evacuations had been successful beyond our wildest hopes—almost 50 % of sapients evacuated—but now we had another problem. The Swarm was in range of our core worlds. It was unthinkable, but the hub of galactic civilization itself, the World-City, was at risk. 
 
 But life goes on, at least until it does n't, and we were hosting the Human delegation as a part of the interview process to join the galactic community. There'd been a lot of hesitance. A lot of sapients joked that they were scarier than the Swarm. A hive mind they could understand, but an unconscious parasitic relationship with microorganisms was just weird. And of what we'd learned of their culture, they had a lengthy history of not just war but glorification of it. That they entertained their offspring with stories of deadly combat before they were trusted with knowledge of reproduction. Their ability to survive extreme cold and hot without temperature support apparatus was unprecedented. And the way they consumed nutrients was disgusting and barbaric, not to mention the way their historian said they used to obtain them—stalking sentients to the point of exhaustion, then setting them on fire and ripping them apart with their nutrient consumption oriface. 
 
 I disagreed, though. I'd seen what the Swarm could do firsthand. 
 
 We were giving them a tour of our technological capabilities, finishing up with a tour of our satellite ship manufacturing facility. It was a hail-mary. They were the fourth species we'd interviewed, with the promise of upliftment to any species who had a strategy for defeating the Swarm. 
 
 The VI in control of the shuttle announced we'd be using a lightspeed accelerator to cut the time of our journey to just four seconds, and to make sure you were seated or holding onto something in case of inertial dampener lag. After the brief flash, the entire delegation looked shocked—and excited. They huddled around each other. Their leader offered a proposal on the spot. They asked for a spacedock within a light year of the current Swarm location, three of their most powerful lightspeed accelerators, accurate coordinates to the Swarm Queen, wormhole access back to Earth to bring other resources, and as much tungsten as we could spare. Odd, but none seemed out of the ordinary—even youth on the World-City were trusted with lightspeed runabouts. We accepted. 
 
 Three days later, they contacted us to announce they were ready, and just waiting for the leadership council. I was shocked when we arrived—all they'd done is cut the mass of tungsten in two and sit a lightspeed accelerator to each one. 
 
 Their leader pressed a button. The tungsten mass shot off into space in the blink of an eye. And then... fire. The part of space the Swarm were traveling through lit up white-hot, as though a supernova had occurred at lightspeed. 
 
 The humans cheered. We cheered. The chair of the council told the Human leader they were proud to offer Humanity probationary access to the World-City, and if they stayed in good standing, after a few centuries, a seat on the junior council. It was a rote speech they'd given to dozens of new species over their tenure. 
 
 The Human leader paused, as though he were deep in thought, and then bared the sharp spines around his nutrient intake orifice. 
 
 `` I've got a counter-offer. Humans are given three seats on the senior council, including the Chairmanship.'' 
 
 `` That's outrageous!'' 
 
 `` Ask me why we asked for three lightspeed accelerators.'' 
 
 He looked confused. `` Why did you ask for three lightspeed accelerators?'' 
 
 `` Simple,'' he said, pacing across the room, until he was standing in front of the second mass of Tungsten. `` One for the Swarm queen. One to take home, study, reverse-engineer. And one to aim at the World-City in case you did n't like our counteroffer.'' 
 
 The jokes were right. Humans were worse than the Swarm.
