Jeth exhaled, his fury with Lizzie a dead weight against his chest. How dare she share such secrets with these strangers? She was under a lot of pressure with the manual jump, his conscience reminded him. And no doubt she’d blathered out of nerves. But that didn’t excuse it. She’d exposed a powerful pressure point for Sierra to use against him. “What does that matter?” he said.
“Because I have a way for you to get a replacement metadrive.”
Jeth snorted. He’d been wrong about her. She wasn’t smart. She was crazy. “Oh sure, because those are just lying about for the taking.”
“You can get anything if you’ve got the right bargaining chip.”
“Like what?”
“Like the weapon Hammer is after.”
Jeth narrowed his gaze. “You said you didn’t know anything about a weapon.”
Sierra folded her arms. “I lied.”
“Well then, now I’m ready to believe everything you say.”
She tapped her foot. “I didn’t know if I could trust you, and ignorance is safety.”
“Not to mention an ace in the hole, right?”
“Right.” She drew a breath and let the air out through her teeth. “Also, I didn’t realize what you were talking about at first. What he’s after isn’t a weapon in the traditional sense. It’s not an explosive or viral or anything like that.”
“Oh yeah? Then what the hell is it?”
“The most dangerous weapon there is: information. And I happen to know exactly how much it’s worth.”
“How much?”
Her lips parted in a smile. “It’s priceless.”
Jeth slowly exhaled, not daring to believe. Information, she said. A dangerous weapon. He did a mental review of the conversation with Hammer, remembering the way he’d stumbled ever so slightly when he’d first mentioned the weapon. Had he lied? Of course he did. He’s Hammer.
But Jeth wasn’t biting. Not yet. “Okay, tell me more. Why do you think this information is the weapon that Hammer’s after?”
“Because it was the only thing of real value on the Donerail. There were a couple of crates of guns and ammunition, but I imagine Hammer has plenty of those types of conventional weapons already.”
Jeth thought about it, conceding the point. “All right. Then what exactly is this information?”
“The code name the ITA uses for it is the Aether Project.”
Jeth ear’s prickled with recognition. He’d heard that title somewhere before, a long time ago. His mom and dad had mentioned it a couple of times between themselves in whispered conversations he wasn’t meant to overhear.
“What it contains is everything there is to know about metatech,” Sierra continued. “Where it comes from, how it’s manufactured. Everything. The entire project is on a data cell that I have hidden on the Donerail for safekeeping.”
Jeth’s head spun with questions and doubts. If she was telling the truth, kings, dictators, and other world leaders would give anything to possess it. For centuries, the ITA had held the monopoly on space travel, charging whatever they wanted for the use of metatech. Breaking that monopoly would indeed be priceless. And keeping it in place would mean a lot to Hammer. Without the monopoly, his metatech black market would crumble. And it obviously explained the ITA’s interest in retrieving the ship.
Still, Jeth wasn’t about to take her word on it without proof. “You say that you’ve got this data cell hidden on the Donerail. But how did you come to possess something so valuable in the first place?”
Sierra grimaced. “Not easily.”
Jeth couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. “Are you implying that you stole it?”
She stood up straighter, that affronted kitten look on her face again. “And why is that so hard to believe?”
“Well, as you pointed out, I happen to know a thing or two about thieving, and I imagine stealing that kind of information would take a lifetime of experience and a planet’s worth of funding. Where was this project kept anyway?”
“On First-Earth.”
Jeth laughed. “So you’re telling me you managed to escape from the heaviest ITA-traveled bit of space in the universe with that kind of booty in tow—and not get caught?”
“We had a lot of help.”
“Yeah, from who?”
“The captain of the Donerail for one. But that’s not the point, anyway.”
No, he supposed it wasn’t. The point was whether or not she was full of it. If not, this might be the answer to all his problems. But it was too soon to get his hopes up.
Jeth leaned forward, pinning her with his gaze. If she was lying, he would catch her on it. “Okay, next question. How does a probationary agent in the ITA gain access to the project in the first place?”
Sierra scoffed. “I already told you that I made full agent. Not that you have room to talk about being young.”
“This isn’t about me. It’s about you convincing me that this isn’t some kind of hoax. I’ve never met anybody who knows a thing about meta technology. Even my parents didn’t know and they were pretty high up in the ITA at one point.”
The scornful look vanished from her face. She let out a breath. “I suppose it’s a little hard to believe from your perspective. So I’ll tell you what I can of my story, okay?”
Jeth sat back, arms folded. “I’m all ears.”
Sierra took a deep breath. “Like I said, I’m only seventeen, but I’ve been an agent for two years now. I have an extremely high IQ and a certain aptitude for biology and genetics. These skills made me valuable to the Aether Project scientists, and they offered me an internship. Eventually, I was given more and more access to the project, which was how I ended up with a chance to take the data.”
Jeth slid his tongue against his teeth, thinking it over. She didn’t appear to be lying, and he had no trouble believing the IQ bit, although he didn’t understand what biology and genetics had to do with metatech. No, it was the thieving he didn’t believe. “Why?”
“Why what?” Exasperation colored Sierra’s voice.
“Why did you steal it?”
A flush blossomed in her cheeks, and she said through gritted teeth, “The same reason anybody steals something. For the money.”
“True enough,” Jeth said, thinking about his own employment situation. Yet he didn’t believe that motivation in her. She struck him as a girl who’d grown up in a moneyed household, what with her smarts and proper speech and what might be considered aristocratic good looks. “But you don’t exactly seem like the type desperate enough for cash to pull off something so tough.”
“You’re wrong,” she snapped back. “I already told you that I wanted out of the ITA and so did Vince. We needed something valuable enough to buy our protection. The Aether Project is it. Once the information is out there, the ITA will be too concerned with trying to hold onto their power to worry about us anymore. And then there was Cora to think about, too.”
“Cora?” Jeth had completely forgotten about her. How did she fit into all of this?
“Yes, Cora. She was in a bad situation. Her father was one of the scientists on the project. A horrible, abusive man. I had to get her out of there.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jeth said, horrified by the idea of someone abusing Cora. No wonder the girl clung to Sierra. A swell of sympathy made his throat burn. “What about her mother?”
“She. . . I never met her mother.”
Jeth frowned. What was she hiding? Then a more troubling thought occurred to him. “But why you? I mean, why would you do it? Is she a relative? A sister? Or are you her mother?”