he Second Shock Army went forward in the direction of Luban, and my corps was left to guard the left flank of the breakthrough in the area, directly adjacent to the west bank of the Volkhov River. Realizing the magnitude of the problem, Colonel General von Küchler decided not to strike immediately at the base of the ledge formed by the Soviet offensive, but instead concentrate his efforts on slowing the advance of Klykov's army.
As a result, there was a temporary lull in my area of the front, and to be honest, I was only happy about it. My corps lost a quarter of its personnel and more than a third of its tanks. There was almost nothing left of the Kudryavtsev’s Air Regiment. Virtually all of the surviving planes were in need of repair, and the regiment, which did everything in its power in this operation, had to be taken immediately to the rear to be re-formed. On top of that, Colonel Tsaitiuni's artillerymen had used up all the special ammunition. The Katyushas' regiment had a similar situation – there were only one full salvo of thermite shells left. So I was not anxious to go into battle, and the command of the Volkhov front was well aware that my corps needed a respite to replenish the weakened units with men and equipment.
After shifting all current affairs to my subordinates, I ordered them not to disturb me unless absolutely necessary and closed myself in my office in one of the surviving buildings of the former school of aviation mechanics in the village of Selishchi on the eastern bank of the Volkhov River. Here, at last, I had the opportunity to quietly deal with the new information that had so unexpectedly fallen on my head right in the middle of the combat flight.
I knew I wouldn't have much time. A call from Moscow or from the front headquarters could come at any minute. I had no doubt whatsoever that I would not be left as commander of this corps, which had successfully completed its offensive task and was now on the defensive for a long time. Nevertheless, I still counted on a few hours of pause.
The Moonbase artificial intelligence report gave me contradictory feelings. The power of command is a good thing, of course, except that I seem to be in command of the wreckage and the ruins. The rebel cruiser did its job very well. In fact, only some rooms of the lower level of the base remained relatively intact, and by no means the most important ones. Probably some of the destroyed utilities and equipment could have been repaired, but the computer did not have accurate data about the state of some sectors and even entire levels of the base, as the few surviving repair drones were unable to get through the many meters of debris of polymer concrete that had formed when the slabs collapsed.
I immediately had to give up hope that there was a reserve fighter, or at least some unarmed science team ship, somewhere in a distant warehouse. Such a machine, even into a laid-up mode, would immediately respond to the base's central computer and send it a concise report on the status of key systems.
In fact, what the drones that survived the attack managed to do should have been considered a rare stroke of luck, after all, they were deprived of a unified leadership and isolated from each other in dilapidated rooms and corridors. The artificial intelligence of one of the eight surviving repair drones, having rather modest capacities, took over the coordination of the brigade, that had spontaneously formed, and in ten months, the drones managed to partially restore power to the base and, most importantly, to get to the central computer unit and start up two of its seven system modules. From here on, the repair progressed more smoothly. The base AI took charge of the work, in addition, it had much more authority to interrogate and subdue equipment and systems that remained at least partially functional, than the repair drones.
The long-range communications system was beyond repair, which was to be expected – the rebels destroyed it first, using no less than a dozen long-range missiles for the purpose. Things were a little better with short-range communications, although at first the weak transmitters of the repair drones could hardly reach even the satellites orbiting Earth. These devices were designed to operate within the Moonbase, and communication systems were not their strong suit. Once the central computer started up, the problem was solved, but as it turned out, the repair drones couldn't go any further in rebuilding the base on their own.
Heavy equipment was needed to remove the rubble. The only well-protected multipurpose tunneler available at the base, was buried under tons of soil and ceiling debris in one of the hangars on the second underground level. It responded to the central computer and even reported no serious damage, but the machine was not able to get out from under the rubble on its own, though it tried, so it was not to be expected to help in the foreseeable future.
Neither the arsenal's computer nor the transmitters of the combat equipment it contained responded to requests. This meant that the boarding robots and other autonomous mechanisms were destroyed or severely damaged, or they would have been in contact long ago.
The base housing unit was also badly damaged, but there was nothing of particular value to me there. That said, there were a lot of interesting trivia surviving on the base. For example, repair drones retrieved and repaired two ROCK-M rifle systems from under the rubble that belonged to fallen infantrymen from the base guard company. True, the use of these weapons required a battle suit with an exoskeleton, and none of them survived, at least in the part of the base accessible to repair drones.
The rest of the equipment found and recovered by the drones left me indifferent, at least while I was here on Earth, and it was there at the Moonbase. Nevertheless, my opportunities did increase considerably.
First, I finally gained access to the network of reconnaissance drones that had been operating autonomously all this time on the planet's surface. And secondly, now I was able to draw information not from the extremely degraded databases of the escape pod's computer and the small brains of the satellites in orbit, but from the vast stores of the base's central computer, which contained data on the history of the Sixth Republic and other human civilizations, including details of their pre-space-age technology.
But even that was not all. The artificial intelligence of the Moonbase's central computer was orders of magnitude greater than anything I've had at my disposal up to now. For example, it simply would not have allowed the situation which my air convoy, that delivered supplies to the Rzhev Pocket, got into. The escape pod computer could not adequately assess the threat posed by the German anti-aircraft and searchlights ambush, which was scattered over a large area, and the Moonbase AI would have immediately warned me of the danger.
Similarly, the ability to analyze the information collected by ground drones has increased very significantly. These small and very different mechanisms, covered with powerful camouflage fields, penetrated into the most secret and carefully guarded bunkers, military factories, closed laboratories and any storage of secret documents. While the central computer was down, they functioned autonomously, continuing to carry out tasks received before the attack on the base. Now the control of the drone network was back in the hands of the artificial intelligence, ready to begin purposefully collecting information, and exactly the kind of information that was important to solve the tasks set by the scientific and military command of the Moonbase, which at the moment was me in one person.
Unfortunately, drones could not perform any tasks other than reconnaissance. The prohibition of interference was not invented at the Moonbase, but in much higher spheres, and in addition to the instructions and regulations which it just permeated, it was taken into account in the creation of research equipment. The drones had no weapons or dual-purpose devices. The designers have done everything possible to ensure that the users of land probes have as few opportunities as possible to influence the course of the civilization under study.
Colonel Niven, by his order, lifted my ban on interference. Apparently, he had extraordinary powers in that situation, since the artificial intelligence of the Moonbase did not question the legitimacy of the decision. And now I have not heard any comments from the central computer about my actions on the planet. The AI was ready to obey my orders, although, frankly, I was wary of its resistance. It even stressed me out to a certain extent. What on earth had to happen for the impartial artificial intelligence to allow itself to obey the order of Colonel Niven, who clearly
