Learning about little Jessica Gardner

“–AAT!” The girls finished shouting while you rubbed your ears.

“Um, what are we shouting about?” Rutherford asked after his shout trailed off.

“He was just telling them about Jessica,” Tendi replied while giving your girls a look. “You didn’t know?”

“I haven’t gotten around to telling them, I was going to tell everyone after I met Jessica,” you sighed. “Now I’m going to have everyone following me to the meet.” You just know you were going to be seeing a lot of replicated binoculars and climbing rope.

“Do Aelita and Starfire know?” Kyoka demanded, glaring at you accusingly.

“Mariner ended up telling them before me,” you chuckled, grabbing a cola and taking a gulp. “Other than them, I don’t think anyone else knows other than my mom.”

“You know about the wiretap?” Ino asked as she pulled a flower hairpin out of her bangs.

“No…” you say slowly. “But we’re going to talk about that later. I sent her a voice message which, due to needing to cross the interuniversal barrier, she probably only received it about” you glance at the time, “now actually. So we could be expecting my mom any hour now.” Along with half the Gardner Castle hanger, you thought privately.

“How did you find out?” Callie asked, reminding you of that unspoken question.

“Well…”

Several subjective weeks earlier

You were approaching your quarters onboard the Voyager. It has been about a week and half so far since you have arrived and many adventures have been had. Case in point, the doors to your quarters were still torn wide open from when Starfire busted out during the earlier musical number.

“So like around 4, you might get some days where your quarters or house or whatever is just covered in flowers and you need to cut your way out,” you overhear Mariner saying something. You pause at the door, wondering what she was talking about. “I mean Starfire would probably be fine since she has the strength of thirty targs and all but maybe keep a phaser handy.”

“Maybe we could add an alarm for unusual plant growth,” Aelita suggested before Starfire suddenly cut in.

“But then wouldn’t alarm go off when James is doing this special vine game,” she pointed out.

“We’ll figure something out because I am not missing that,” Aelita decided after a moment. You then hear her shuffle a bit. “How did Jessica react?”

“She stumbled in with a head full of cherry blossoms and demanding breakfast, it took me forever to get her to talk the plants into letting me go and then even more to get them out of the house,” Mariner laughed fondly. “You two would love her.”

“Was she on Risa?” Starfire asked kindly.

“Not yet, my dad’s bringing her along, they were going to arrive in a couple of days, well relative to when we got here anyways,” Mariners waved off. “They were so excited for the surprise, they kept messaging me asking for hints.”

“So when are you going to tell James?” You decided it was time to walk in.

“Tell me what?”

“It took some prodding and flying fists but eventually Mariner told me about Jessica and how she raised her until she was around five when Jessica wanted to stay with her friends on Earth and started staying with her granddad,” you finished the storytime as your group plus Tendi and Rutherford boarded a shuttle heading back towards the city. “They still apparently talk everyday over the PADD.”

“They do, it’s how we find out about Jessica, the privacy filters were malfunctioning due to a broken relay,” Rutherford confirmed as he took his seat. “This tech assimilator device had torn it out while rampaging through our hall.”

“Have either of you ever met or talked with her?” Ino asked. You gave her a glare as you were about to ask that. Ino just stuck out her tongue and pulled an eyelid.

“Yeah, she’s been on the Cerritos a few times but the first time I saw her she was calling the captain grandma. We didn’t know that the captain was Mariner’s mom back then.”

“Please tell me more and leave nothing back,” you beg of Tendi who gave you a cringing face as you got a bit too close. Kyoka used her earlobe jacks to pull you into your seat.

“Seriously man, she’s going to tell you, so sit down already,” she glared at you. You gave an apologetic smile before turning back to Tendi before repeating your request.