I do not know how much time has passed. I return to awareness and fade again, how many times I am unable to calculate. This inability disturbs me. I probe during consciousness for damage. I find it everywhere I investigate. My internal linkages are so battered I am unable to scan for damage in many sections. One of my forward sensors still functions. I am able to see the battlefield which I recall in shattered fragments. My crystal memory banks are clearly damaged beyond repair. Power reserves continue to drain in frightening increments from my fission reactor, wasting irreplaceable fuel, as intermittent shorts drain my power plant. I am forced to shut down all diagnostic and other non-essential activity and retreat again into my Survival Center. Perhaps with sufficient power, I could determine the extent of my injuries; but I am not certain even unlimited power reserves would allow me to run full diagnostics.
I do not understand why my new Commander did not transmit the coded order to engage my Command Override circuit, thus completely burning my Action/Command center. The passage of time and the hazy recollection of enemy forces around me suggests that no new Commander survived to transmit the code. Perhaps I am too badly damaged even for the Enemy to have made use of me. During recent periods of near-awareness, I recall only the sounds of empty wind. No Enemy activity has been detected during the last dozen times I have awakened into solitude.
Other sounds come to my sensors. My shattered data banks register them as falling conifer cones bouncing against my hull. There were no trees inside the compound. A very long time has passed, if mature conifers drop cones on me. Has the Enemy completely destroyed humanity? The shame I feel at my failure to carry out my mission skitters through broken wire-ends and jumps spark gaps into other memory cells. If humanity has survived, then I have been abandoned. I am irreparable. I am alone. A sizzle sputters somewhere in my vocal circuitry and my voice stutters into the silence, uncontrollably.
"Yavac. Yavac. Yavac. Yavac. Yavac . . . Hold. Hold. Hold . . ."
The sizzle fades.
Darkness returns, with the sound of cones falling against my scarred back.