Chapter 2: Minefield Part 2

The turbo lift doors creaked open, due to damage from the initial contact with the mines, and the away team led by the Cardassian ship's tactical officer stepped onto the bridge of the Galor Class warship. Heads turned as they did so, notably those of the ship's commander, and another much older crew member he was in discussion with. Gul Haren stepped toward the Starfleet entourage and addressed the Saurian he identified as being the most senior of the trio of officers. 

"Welcome aboard my ship Commander. I am Gul Haren and I thank you for your offer of assistance. It is no easy thing for me as a Cardassian to accept it either, but I must say I am glad you are here. You've already my met Laren, my tactical officer, and behind me here is-," 

"I am Gul Mavek," the older man said interrupting the Gul "Retired, and merely here as an observer." 

"Yes, well as you can see Commander we have quite a mess here. No communications at the moment, though I must say it was ingenious of you to make contact via our transponder frequency."

"The benefit of having a Cardasssian sserving in Sstarfleet," answered Schaell. "Gul haren, are your navigational lightss sstill functional?"

"Navigational lights?" the Cardassian captain asked genuinely confused by the question "I'm not sure." He turned to another crew member, a young Cardassian male seated at the warship's helm "Asrek, are our navigational lights functioning?"

"Forward, yes Gul, aft..no."

"There is your answer commander, but what bearing could that have on our situation?"

"It 'ss a trick firsst used by then Lieutenant Commander Kheren during the Borg War to communicate when comm is down; using nav lightss as emitters with an ancient ssimplisstic Terran code called Morse. It 'ss now sstandard emergency procedure in Lotuss Fleet. Thiss can be either done manually or programmed into your comm ssystem to convert sstandard sspeech and data to thiss code. The Disscovery will pick it up and automatically decode it and reply in kind."

As that conversation was going on Catherine Steele had her eyes on the older Cardassian "observer" standing behind Gul Haren. There was something familiar about the man...for some reason she felt like she'd seen him before.

"That is inventive Commander," Haren replied "by all means proceed, my crew can assist in the operation of the ship's controls if need be." 

"Indeed quite creative," Mavek said "but then Starfleet always seems to have the ability to work around the impossible." 

"The advantage od having sso many sspecies freely working together," Schaell paraphrased himself. "Jusst recall how the ssimple fact of having a Cardasssian among our officers is proving sso helpful in our current predicament."

He moved to the officer who would adjust the nav lights onto comm photonic emitters. he quickly explained to him the idea and the man proceeded to implement the system with typical Cardassian efficiency. Once he signaled readiness, the first officer of the Discovery tapped his combadge.

"Sschaell to Ssorripto; we are about to report to the Disscovery with the nav lights. Hope whatever you are doing back there will not be impeded or impede with anything."

Following the response from the engineer, Schaell looked at the Cardassian commander.

"It sseems that the repairs to your sship are much more extenssive and complicated that expected. With you permisssion, Ssir, I will implement an alternative. Please direct uss to the porthole mosst directly facing our sship."

He then took his phaser out and offered it to Lieutenant Ssteele.

"Lieutenant, can you adjust this phaser to one thousanth power while keeping it's beam cohesive?"