Odin entered his ship when the wall were still wet with blood. He left his hovering platform behind and waddled on his own hooves. Isis followed him and two white drones came behind her. Odin surveyed the dead bodies spread all through the Asgard. “This was my home,” he said.

Isis asked, “Who did it?”

Muninn reported, “Unclear, the attackers erased all security recordings of the incident. They also released a gamma-ray wave when they left which cleansed the scene of all DNA evidence. They knew our security software very well.”

Isis added, “...and they knew how to get away with it.”

Odin asked, “What did they take?”

Muninn consulted a data projection from his clipboard. “There was a targeted data breach, my lord. They erased what they accessed, but I can look for the gaps. It is the medical records. All of our medical records of the Subject Candide have been erased.”

“The firefighter?!” said Isis in a tone of genuine shock.

Odin turned the head of a dead drone to look into its eyes. “They killed everyone because they came in. They came in to make certain that they left us with no physical copies. Their goal was to make certain that I could not restore Candide. They risked my wrath just to keep one human dead.” His words were spoken with no anger but flat and slowly.

Isis hopped up next to him. “Honey, this was done specifically while you were away from the ship. They didn't try to kill you, just the crew which you can replace. Everyone who died here can be restored because you have all of their backups. This is a robbery, not an act of war, so don't freak out. Maybe one of the omnis was behind this attack, but more likely it was the Cut Throat Raiders or someone working with them. We'll figure it out and take appropriate actions when we are certain.”

Odin said, “Aegelief, tell me about Candide's data.”

Aegelief had been silently following in the back of a group this whole time. He reported, “I have a copy right here, my lord.” He held up the pistol-shaped nano-machine device in his hand. “I used the medical nano-machines to record him while we were on Pirate's flagship. No one else knows about this copy of the data.”

Odin said, “No one else will. The existence of that data is a secret known only to the four of us here: myself, you, Muninn, and Isis.”

Isis asked, “Why not use it now and make another Candide?”

Odin said, “Cloning is only a partial restoration. Chronos developed a technique which combines his time-manipulation technology with my bio-technology to completely restore the original human. It's not a copy. It's the real Candide. We need to find Chronos first.”

Isis said, “Aw, that's so sentimental.”

Odin commanded, “Aegelief of Asgard, you personally will carry that device to Vault Delta in Security Facility 1820 and secretly hide it there. No one else must know that it exists. Leave immediately.”

Aegelief left as commanded.

On board the Asgard, the others reached the bridge and found more of the same carnage with bodies stretched across consoles and chairs. Muninn asked, “Should I mobilize the fleet to search for any ships that match the description the Cut Throat Raiders or should I call the fleet here for thorough investigation to uncover any traitors?”

“Neither, I'm not thinking about justice, Muninn. We will take no action.”

“My lord?” Muninn asked.

Isis said, “Piggy, you were the victim. Tell me that you aren't thinking this was your fault.”

Odin turned around. He looked at the body of Huginn, sliced in two across his own captain's chair. Odin explained, “Pirate hated me. The savages who did this hate me. They don't hate me without reason. Crimes against us will continue until somebody gets lucky enough to actually kill me – and you, Isis. I am over a billion cycles old and have the largest fleet in the universe at my disposal, but all I am doing with that power is playing a game. I don't even care about the game anymore. If I were conquering or experimenting or building or bringing law to the lawless worlds they could understand that. They could understand even if there were casualties. Some might even respect me for it. They do not understand our ennui. It's not what I do that they hate but that I don't do anything.”

Isis asked, “What else can you do?”

“I can do more. They hate me because I have no purpose. I'm like a badly written character in a badly written satire with no conflict and no stakes. I would hate me too.”

“What do you need, Piggy?”

“I need a motivation, Bunny.”

Minutes later, Aegelief entered one of the Asgard's disk-shaped shuttles. He sealed the hatch behind him and settled gently into the pilot's seat. The drone had not mentioned Candide's last words. He did not report that he had copied the data of the pirates also, including all of the designs for the jamming technologies, the psychic defenses, the anti-matter weapons, and more. He did not explain that by using the same device, he had added this knowledge to Candide's backup data.

Being a loyal drone of Odin, Aegelief was incapable of experiencing hatred for his master. The concept of anyone wishing his lord harm was alien to him. This trifling detail of extra data had simply not been worth mentioning.

The shuttle launched, carrying Candide's persona as its cargo to a vault world half a galaxy away.