Accidental Meet Cute (Backpost)

Posted on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @ 3:24am by Lieutenant Commander T'Prin Price & Lieutenant Michael Caulfield & Lieutenant JG Ramat'iklan

2,320 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 1: A New Frontier
Location: Sickaby
Timeline: After Makan Me

Michael hadn’t wasted any time after conferring with Makan. He'd rushed to deck four and gotten his hands dirty immediately. The plasma leak was small, but too close to the torpedo room for his liking. He inspected the rest of the section before returning to Engineering and setting up teams. With over forty decks to examine, only seventeen hours, and a limited number of engineers, there was no time to waste. He tapped six engineers in addition to himself, divided up the checklist, and set everyone to their tasks. By the time the next shift was due, he’d have the rest of the list ready for the second team. He would be working straight through. He promised the Captain a fully inspected and ready ship, and he wasn’t going to let the Captain, nor himself, down.

He'd spent the last two hours crawling around the tubes and was making his way towards Cargo Bay Five for one of the bonus items Makan had listed for him. Checking the power systems for the transporter involved checking both power relays in the cargo bay, as well as some under the hood work in the guts of the ship. Since he’d already been in the tubes, he decided to do the backdoor inspections first.

***

"Do you hear that?” T’Prin said, looking around.

Ramat'iklan raised an eyebrow; he'd been busy working on the documentation for one of his patients when the question came. "Admittedly, no." He stated. "What kind of noise was it?"

“Sounds like a gentle knocking or banging…” T’Prin said.

"An engineer, perhaps, making use of the Jeffries tubes." Ramat'iklan shrugged. "Perhaps it is nothing to worry about." Yep, in the medical profession, they had a saying: when hearing hoofbeats, assume horses, not zebras. Indeed, oftentimes the most innocuous sounds usually had mundane sources. This time was no different, surely.

“Well, with my ears it could be happening three decks away,” she said, smiling with a shrug. “Okay, as I was saying…duty roster. I know five minutes overlap at the start is standard, but I’ve found fifteen minutes of overlap at the beginning of the shift just works better. If you ask people to stay late, they feel it more. Getting an early start on their shift is far easier to swallow than coming in on time and staying fifteen minutes late. And we compensate with an extra coffee break during their shift, and it’s a win-win-win.”

"Yes, ma'am. I suppose we can trial this change and gauge crew satisfaction." Ramat quipped.

“Oh! We also had that one biobed you mentioned. Which one was it?”

"Biobed 3B. Here." Ramat'iklan stood up from the duty officer's desk and led her out into sickbay proper, over to the offending biobed.

She followed him out to the main area of Sickbay and when they reached the offending biobed, tried accessing the controls to run a diagnostic, but it wouldn’t respond. She turned to a nearby terminal and accessed the crew roster. “Ah, looks like the Chief Engineer is on board. Let’s see if we can persuade him to spare someone. She tapped her combadge. "Price to…Caulfield. Could you spare someone to stop by Sickbay? We have a biobed that won’t respond for diagnostics and won’t scan.”

Michael sat back and wiped his brow, then tapped his combadge. "Yup, you’re on my list. Is it urgent?”

"Well, not the most urgent, but we’ll need it looked at before we leave,” T’Prin said. “Could you please spare someone if they’re nearby? I doubt it’ll put them off schedule too much.”

Michael repressed a sigh. One birthday wish to be popular and this is what happens, he teased himself. "All right, I'll come by and look into it," Michael said, pulling his tools together. “I’m actually nearby so just let me get out of the crevice I’ve wedged myself into and I’ll be right there.”

“Excellent, thank you,” T’Prin said.

Michael pulled himself out of the trenches and back into the jeffries tube. He turned to his left, crawling to the end and reaching the exit hull plate, trying to dislodge it. Unfortunately it was stuck. He frowned, not noticing any issues when he’d entered the junction. He put his shoulder to it and gave a good push.

"Okay, well we'll be--" T’Prin paused as there was the sound of pounding again and then suddenly a shout and a thud. She turned, realizing the sound came from her office.

She walked quickly across sickbay and into her office, and gasped as she saw an engineer draped across her desk, groaning. She turned back to the main bay and shouted, "AG cart!"

An orderly came rushing with an anti-gravity gurney and she and Ramat’iklan helped lift the engineer off the desk and placed him carefully on the gurney. They pushed him back into the medical bay and transferred him to a functioning bio bed.

T'Prin reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a small, loosely-connected device. She slipped it over her left hand and it fit like a glove, pieces covering her palm and fingertips. She rushed out of her office and got to the bio bed just as Ramat’iklan and the orderly lowered the Engineer onto it.

She ran her gloved hand over his body slowly, the biobed's display registering a scan. “Hypospray,” she said, holding out a hand. She took it once offered, programming it with a painkiller and pressed it to his neck. His breathing eased and his body relaxed a bit. "Dermal regenerator," she said, holding out a hand again. As Ramat’iklan put it in her hand, she ran it over the engineer’s sides, then had Ramat’iklan help roll him onto his side and healed the bruises on his back.

She scanned him again and reprogrammed the hypospray and pressed it to his neck once more.

Michael's eyes fluttered and he opened them slowly. As things came into focus, he couldn't believe his eyes. "You're beautiful," he said in awe, staring at the girl with the gold halo in front of him.

T'Prin smiled shyly and blushed heavily, her skin taking on a slightly greenish tinge. "You...um...thank you," she said, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear self-consciously.

Michael shook himself a bit and sat up, rubbing his neck. "Sorry. Not sure what happened there. Could have sworn I was heading to the corridor."

"Yes, well, evidently you've gotten yourself a bit turned around," she said. She looked at Ramat’iklan. “Doctor Ramat’iklan, could you get me a padd?”

"Already on it." Ramat'iklan said as he shuffled away to fetch the device for her. He returned with it shortly after and moved round to monitor another patient on another biobed.

Michael nodded to Ramat’iklan, then looked at the blonde doctor again and couldn't stop his grin. "Guess I did. I um…I'm Michael. And you are?"

"T'Prin. Doctor T'Prin Price," she said, smiling back.

"An absolute pleasure to meet you, T'Prin," Michael said. "Not often you meet a Vulcan with a last name. Or one with such a nice smile."

"My father is Vulcan, my mother is human," she said. "So I tend to be a bit more...expressive." As Ramat’iklan returned with a PADD, she placed it over her left hand and the PADD came to life, downloading all the scans he’d taken. "You should be all right, but I might suggest not crawling through the tubes for a bit."

Few things could get Michael's attention. One was a pretty face, but the other was definitely new toys. "What is that?" he said, fascinated, looking at the device on her hand.

"Oh, it’s something my mother made. She is Chief Engineer on the ship I grew up on," T'Prin said, holding her hand up proudly and wiggling her covered fingers. "Many of the doctors and engineers on her ship use it. She made one for me when I graduated from the academy. It’s basically a wearable tricorder."

"Fascinating," Michael said, taking her hand and examining the device. He appreciated how the components were distributed around her hand, allowing functionality but still comfort on the hand; between the scanners and the system interface, it was a complicated, but compact piece of machinery. He was so engrossed, it took him a good long minute to realize he was holding her hand in his, and when he felt the warmth of her skin, he felt a rush. He looked up at her again. "Very impressive."

If T'Prin blushed any harder, she'd look like an Orion. "Thank you," she said. "I'll show you how it works some time, if you like."

"I would love that," Michael said, trying not to sound too eager. "How about over dinner tonight? My quarters, 1900 hours?" He gave her his most charming smile and looked deep in her eyes.

T'Prin raised her eyebrows in surprise, but gave a girlish shrug. "Um...sure, yes, I'd love to," she said.

"Great!" Michael said, trying not to sound too excited. He swung his legs around and moved to get off the biobed.

She stepped back and let him get on his feet. "It was nice meeting you Michael," she said. "I'll see you later."

Michael took her free hand in his. "I promise you, the pleasure was all mine," he said. "See you at 1900!" He headed out of the Infirmary, but couldn't resist sneaking one last glance over his shoulder. She was pretending not to look after him and he grinned to himself, right up until he hit the door frame. He shook his head, gave another smile and quickly walked back out into the corridor to save as much face as he could.

T'Prin couldn't help but let out a laugh at the sight of Michael bumping into the bulkhead, but she stifled it quickly to spare his feelings. Once he'd gone, she tried to get control of herself and get back to work. "Okay," she said to her fellow doctor, "where were we?"

"You summoned Lieutenant Caulfield to effect repairs on the biobed. The biobed remains nonfunctional." Ramat'iklan replied, plainly, as his patient hopped up, waved and headed to the door. God, people could be so weird at times with their priorities.

T’Prin sighed. “I’ll contact Main Engineering this time,” she said, shaking her head and smiling, amused.

"Are you absolutely certain you would like to join him for dinner in that fashion without any prior familiarity?" Ramat'iklan quirked an eyebrow. As much as he may or may not have seemed the part, no, he wasn't that much of a country bumpkin when it came to his crewmates' courtship practices. "I was under the impression that humans prefer to become more familiar before joining a favored one on a... date." Which was exactly what their arrangement sounded like.

T'Prin blushed again. "I um...yes, they usually do," she agreed. "I guess I was caught a bit off guard." She looked at him. "I suppose suddenly going back on things would be impolite." She shrugged helplessly. "I'll address it later. In the mean time, I need your help pulling a fast one with supply to make sure we're stocked up." She grinned and nodded towards her office.

"We are fully stocked, Commander, I ensured it as of this morning." Ramat'iklan had to suppress the urge to sigh. "Enjoy your dinner."

T'Prin stopped, turned back to face him and put her hands behind her back, raising an eyebrow. "I assume you've requisitioned supplies and stores based on Starfleet's standard guidelines for Sickbay readiness?"

"Yes, ma'am. Exactly as specified, by the book," Ramat'iklan replied plainly.

"And the starbase responded with an approved supply list based on their current stock and availability, which you then verified was indeed delivered."

"Yes, ma'am. Petty officers Spiel and Locke and I verified the deliveries ourselves," Ramat'iklan added.

"Excellent," T'Prin said, her Vulcan accent now sounding more...Vulcan as she kept her voice steady. "And how much of the requisition did they give us?"

"Eighty-seven percent. We-" Ramat'iklan had to suppress a sigh. "-I was told that they would deliver the remainder within a few days by the latter two. I should have done more due diligence."

"Don't blame yourself, that's better than usual," she said. "So, now we submit a resupply order for about forty-percent of our initial requisition."

"Commander?" Ramat'iklan raised an eyebrow. "Why forty percent?"

"Because they'll slash that too; But, in the end, we'll wind up with one hundred-to-one-hundred-five-percent." She gave a wry smile. "Bureaucracy: The Great Universal Constant."

What she received then was a look that was a mix of confusion and annoyance. If he were a dog, Ramat'iklan would definitely have had his head tilted in that cute way dogs do when confused or intently listening. Since he wasn't a dog, of course, she received a raised eyebrow instead.

"I grew up on a hospital ship near the Klingon border. This kind of thing happened all the time," she said, shrugging. "I'll get the re-supply requisition put in, if you can handle accepting the next shipment, and then we'll get the new duty roster up. Sound good?"

Bureaucracy. The same human construct that apparently refused to die, two centuries on. Ramat'iklan had to suppress a sigh. As much as he hated the idea, he couldn't argue with the systems that were already in place - as screwed up as they sometimes were.

"Yes, Commander. I will ensure it personally." He stated, picking up a PADD to make the order.

"Excellent," she said, smiling again. "I'll check back with you later." She headed for her office.

 

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