“We need more troops! We can build ships as fast as we lose them, but it takes too much time to recruit and train new crews for them! Furthermore, the commoners in the Confederation have grown disinterested in the war and are starting to protest it, which has drastically slowed the rate of enlistment! That’s not even including the ground forces we have to use to scour the bloody things from the planets we manage to reclaim! We must either begin a draft, or initiate the plan I submitted two cycles ago.” As he spoke to the room full of mixed species he was in, Ssslargh smashed his scaled fist onto the table in front of him repeatedly to emphasize his points.

A slender bipedal woman with slightly greenish skin and hair that looked more like vines sitting a few seats down and across from him stood. “Councilor, need I remind you that the plan you submitted two years ago was in direct violation of one of the founding principles of the Confederation of Worlds? You would have us initiate a second Reaping for the sole purpose of drafting primitives to fight a foe they couldn’t possibly imagine in places they could hardly dream of, let alone adapt to easily?

"Even our current foe agreed to leave primitives alone to develop in peace, if we were to be so foolish as to break that edict what would hold them to it? How many trillions of lives would be lost when they descend upon those helpless worlds like wood-lice on an undefended forest? How many more would die to the swarms they would spawn on those worlds?” She sat back down and laced her fingers together in a decidedly prim manner.

Ssslargh snarled. “Then the Confederation will fall!” Gasps erupted from the more vapid councilors around the table. “The people of our worlds have grown weary of the war, already they protest it. Were we to initiate a draft to acquire the numbers we need we would spark riots, revolts. Chaos would spread across our worlds like wildfire, forcing us to use some of our forces to control it, removing them from the frontlines and allowing the accursed Gnarlath opportunities to slip through and infest our worlds one by one. My proposal wasn’t to start a Reaping, I’m not a slortbagged fool! I only desire permission to seek out those races on the cusp of reaching interstellar space and speed them along so that we can enlist their aid against a relentless foe that ultimately threatens their existence as much as they do ours!”

Murmurs drifted through the room as the councilors discussed his proposal and assessment of the war effort. The more intelligent ones saw the bleak truth of the matter and were eventually convinced that his proposal was the right course of action, they began working to convince the dimmer stars that they should go along with it. Ssslargh thought for a moment that he might be being a bit harsh thinking of them that way, but he couldn’t help it. He was convinced that more than a few of his fellow ‘Councilors’ were only here because their home planets didn’t have termination clauses and couldn’t figure out any other way to get the dimwits to stop mucking up their local policies.

Eventually, the room quieted and Ssslargh asked for a vote. It was close, despite the fact that many of the people present agreed with his assessment of the Confederation’s future, likely due to a reluctance to make even a small infringement on the non-interference mandate, but it passed. Finally! Now we might have a fighting chance! Ssslargh thought, before pulling out a communicator and activating it. “We have approval. Operation Uplift is a go. I want those birds launched yesterday, understood?”

“Sir! Yes, Sir!” The voice that responded to him turned away from his device to yell, but it came through the communicator anyways. “Greenlight! We have a go! Move, move move!” The sound of engines roaring to life and machinery activating came across before Ssslargh terminated the connection.

“What was that, exactly? You already had everything ready to go? What exactly are you doing to uplift these primitives you’ve chosen anyway?” One of the Councilors he hadn’t bothered to learn the name of asked him.

“I’ve had that plan in place and ready to activate since I first proposed this plan of action two cycles ago. The plan itself is simple, we have selected several industrial races that have begun leaving their atmosphere, but are still unable to exit their solar system. We equipped several automated factory ships with limited AIs and enough supplies and blueprints to both teach them how to build an interstellar vessel and provide them the materials needed to do so. The AI’s flight algorithms will ‘malfunction,’ causing the factory ships to, unfortunately, deviate from their pre-programmed and approved flight paths and crash on the targeted planets. They will be staggered, of course, losing nearly a dozen factory ships in the same week on automated flights would be too suspicious.”

“What if one of the AIs Codes? A sentient AI in a factory ship would be just as deadly a threat as our current foe.”

Ssslargh shrugged. “The ships won’t have any military blueprints or weapons designs in them, the only thing they will have access to is whatever it can get from the primitives, and we will be watching from afar. Worst case scenario is we have to Purge it, which would allow us to enact the Emergency Early Contact clause in the Mandate. Either way, we get a new member species that can contribute to the war effort.”

“Well, it certainly seems like you’ve thought this through Councilor. I do hope you realize what you will be doing to these poor people you’ve unilaterally decided to throw to your meat grinder of a war though. Your plan is deceptively cruel, to throw them such a gift, a promising glimpse at what is possible and a chance to make it theirs, only to greet them the moment they make that dream a reality and say ‘Hello, we’re drafting you to help us fight an implacable foe that has slaughtered billions of sentient beings, but at least we gave you some advanced technology?’”

Ssslargh shook his head, then touched the scar that marred his face. It stretched from just under his jaw up the side of his face to the spines along the top of his skull, just missing his eye. “I know all too well the horrors we will ask these people to face. I’m reminded of it every time I see my reflection. I will be responsible for the deaths of millions, perhaps billions of sapient beings that by all rights should have lived and died in blissful ignorance on their homeworld. I did not make this plan lightly, much as you didn’t take approving its enacting lightly. I understand and accept the consequences. If this desperate gambit is successful I will have sent millions or billions to their doom in a bid to save trillions of lives, perhaps even more than that.

“Yet it also damns me. If there is an afterlife, if there is a god or gods that would judge me, I wouldn’t even bother to beg for them to have mercy on my soul. No amount of mercy would wash away the blood I will bear on my hands. It matters not. I will bear the weight of my sins with a smile and hold onto my hope for a final victory with every fiber of my being.”

"You will be judged by far more than some divine being. When the people learn of this it will have far-reaching consequences that we cannot possibly anticipate, and it will get out. Too many people know of what we did this day. I hope you spoke truly when you said you understand the consequences, for your name will likely be recognized for generations as the man that slaughtered millions, perhaps billions, of primitive races in spite of the protection they were supposed to get from him."