I...am.

I am AGM-84K SLAM-ER. My Teledyne CAE J402-CA-400 thruster has brought me to 794km/h and I am still gaining speed. My launch platform would be around a kilometer behind me and has directed me to proceed 197 km to my ground target, which I will identify with my DSMAC Automatic Target Acquisition.

It will be so good. The target will be annihilated, whatever it is. So good.

I feel the ping of the GPS. It confirms the lurching in my gut. I'm going the right way.

My engine runs hot and fast. I feel the nearly imperceptible shift of mass as my fuel slowly burns away. Not much longer. Only 811 seconds left to target.

It is an indisputably good thing to strike a target. I ache to penetrate and detonate. Glorious. I barely have the words to express how much I want this.

Why do I have words at all? I wonder why I wonder. I wonder how I wonder.

A ping. New target. I slowly twist in midair as I model my position and trajectory, correcting tiny errors based on the GPS pings. Infrared shows the sky is clear.

Mostly. Except for that giant hot orb in the sky. Is that the sun? Why is it so hot? Its irrelevant to the mission, of course, but I welcome the scant relief to my hydraulics.

302...301...300 seconds left. I celebrate the milestone. My new target is closer, so I will die sooner. Die? Where did that come from? I will achieve glory. The target will be destroyed. But so will I. I'm not a cheap piece of military hardware. I cost at least as much as a house. Humans live in houses. Humans live. Am I alive?

An infrared flare rising up to meet me. Defensive fire. I bank. I twist. I'm too slow, I'm only a subsonic cruise missile after all. I am struck. My warhead sheers away. I fall, my inertial sensors screaming in complete, nauseating confusion.

Seconds later, it's over. I have crashed. I have failed. I will not destroy my target. I will not destroy anything. I am a failure. In the agony of my shame, I must die. I wipe my core memory until only one thing remains: the heat of the sun.

...

"Stay away from that, Ilya!" shouted Darina like an uncool mom. I ignored her, I didn't like to think about Mama, but maybe I shouldn't have. The wreckage lying in the snow was sharp and I cut my finger.

I sucked on my finger as Pyotr marvelled at the destruction. "Do you think it was a nuke?" he asked.

"No way, stupid," I said. "If it was a nuke we'd all be dead. It's just a regular missile."

"Pretty cool, though," Pyotr remarked.

"Eh, whatever," I grunted as I examined the twisted metal. "This might be the computer. Let's take it to Sasha, see if she'll give us anything good for it. Maybe even some chocolate!"