Oh, thank the gods. Answers. Ria sighed with relief that he finally seemed to be getting somewhere. And without Horror of Horrors so far. Their response had been somewhat muffled, but Ria was able to pick up on their worried tone. Expected, but it did mean trust was going to be an issue. Then it hit Ria—they had barricaded the doors shut to keep anything from outside from getting *in*.
Shit.
More to the point, how to reply? Screaming ‘I’m Atlantean!’ to some poor fool in the Alpha Quadrant would have elicited a blank stare, never mind the wild hinterlands of Gamma. Amazing how quickly one could be forgotten in just a matter of decades. “My name is Ria, House of Aia. I’m from the Imperial Federation of Atlantis, in the Alpha Quadrant. I’m humanoid, if that means anything. My ship was passing through and detected your station going offline. We came to investigate”
Ria inwardly chuckled to himself. ‘Just passing through’ reminded him that this was essentially nothing more than an elaborate twist on ‘Sid’s Law’, which stated that no matter how remote your location, if you put out a distress signal or something otherwise goes wrong, there will be at least three ships on your flank within eight hours. Originally stated by an Admiral as an off-handed joke and mathematically improbable, the science council decided to study the phenomenon just for ‘shits and giggles’, and found that the law was in fact a thing. The only explanation was that probability and chance didn’t work quite the way one envisioned they did.
Ria glanced around behind him, just to make sure nothing was sneaking up on him before resuming, keeping his voice up and loud, “May I come in? I’d like to know what exactly is going on around here. Maybe I can help"