In Startide Rising (a novel by
David Brin) it's been a couple
hundred years since
Earthlings finnaly "went" galactic. The only reason they are still around now is the fact that they had uplifted two species from the earth,
chimps and
dolphins. In this novel you follow the first spacecraft piloted by dolphins,
Streaker.
The crew happens to come across a fleet of derelect ships that may date back to the Progenitors. This causes the galactics to become very much in the mood for war and so they end up chasing down Streaker. Anyway the crew of Streaker has to think of some way to get past all of these battling ships and species. What they do is quite a feat of engineering and shows just how desrving of sapience dolphins are. The crew of Streaker is later talked about in the last two books of a side story trilogy of sorts. The books in the trilogy are Infinty's Shore and Heavens Reach