Battles of the PACT Arm

PACT-ZOCU War

Crossdown Corridor

Although most fleet actions between PACT and ZOCU forces took place at the "front lines" near the terminus of the PACT Arm catapult network, ZOCU deployed many raiding vessels to the flanks, striking deep into PACT space along lesser used starways to disrupt logistics, lines of communication and shipping. Especially early in the war, ZOCU technological advantage and carriage of mobile suits gave their light units significant tactical advantages and allowed them to overwhelm patrols and convoy escorts alike. Such commerce raiders used two routes to infiltrate PACT space from their home ports. The more heavily used of these was known as the Crossdown Corridor, a pair of starways extending from the vicinity of Ophen and Choson that ultimately terminate at Crossdown. Early in the war, ZOCU raiders inflicted serious losses all along the catapult lanes until changes of practice with stricter and heavier convoy escort began curbing their success.

Raid on Crossdown

Following the failure of the invasion of Kanon, PACT made a concerted and renewed effort to defend lines of communication in view of securing the still ongoing invasion of Choson. In addition to tighter patrols and stronger convoy escorts, PACT command effected fortification of the key gateway world of Crossdown. A sparsely inhabited system, the dominant feature of Crossdown was a massive space station of posthuman origins, the eponymous Crossdown Station. Although the system itself was navigable, Crossdown Station itself had been an exclusion zone up to that point, being defended by a highly sophisticated autonomous defense system. Through some unknown means, PACT intelligence were able to acquire security keys that spoofed the IFF procedures of the station, allowing vessels supplied with the top secret codes to dock freely. Crossdown was quickly converted into an impenetrable star fortress hosting flotillas of patrols that soon made penetration of PACT supply lines highly dangerous even with a cloaking warship.

By early-2187, ZOCU had gathered good intelligence on the workings of Crossdown Station and produced a complex operational plan to exploit the defenders' reliance on the posthuman base station's defenses. The plan was to utilise the also posthuman-derived MICAIAH administrative cores in the United States of Atlantis to produce another code to subvert Crossdown in the same way. This would allow a fleet of cloaked vessels and mobile suits to approach unnoticed and unintercepted and then launch a surprise attack on the station, destroying the flotillas based there and taking over the station to turn on its former owners. An elite multi-national force was organised for the operation, including SIYAN and Londener technical specialists, Hampshirean, Ithacan and Ophenian fleet units, and a collection of crack knights, supersoldiers and special forces from Kanon, Transbaal, Haraway and Nidaros. The combined force mustered at Hadrian Station and trained on simulators built on collected intelligence data over the nine weeks that MICAIAH required to produce a compatible security key for Crossdown.

The initial stages of the operation went according to plan. Despite conventional defenses more numerous than pre-mission estimates, the ZOCU force managed to achieve complete surprise over the PACT defenders. Aces in cutting edge mobile suits including the OMF-14 Masamune swept the sky of vastly outclassed early PACT suits and over half the fleet elements based at the station were destroyed at the docks. Special forces quickly took control of some two thirds of Crossdown Station's interior, allowing the technical specialists to get well underway before PACT crews mounted a feeble counterattack. Unfortunately, this or something else was sufficient to cause system instability to spread throughout the station. Within forty seconds, Crossdown Station's station entered some form of quantum entanglement resulting in a hard reset. Rebooted internal and external defensive systems quickly engaged forces of both sides, turning the operation into a complete disaster. Only a fraction of ZOCU units survived to escape, representing a vast loss of irreplaceable expertise and staggeringly expensive equipment. PACT forces were wiped out as well, but were able to redeploy a carrier battlegroup to the scene within days of the event. Within several weeks after that, PACT had managed to acquire a new key as well and regained control of Crossdown Station. Following this disaster, ZOCU anti-shipping efforts shifted towards the less ideal and well-travelled Roboworld Run.

Roboworld Run

The second route into PACT Space was known as the Roboworld Run, a starway stretching from Heaven's Shore and skirting the Redstone Gap near the notoriously xenophobic and eponymous planet of Roboworld. Compared to the Crossdown Corridor, it was longer, more convoluted, less direct, and exited uncomfortably close to Earth. Although some captains opted for it, it was mostly a route by which certain members of PACT supported insurgency action on the ZOCU world Heaven's Shore as a strategic diversion. Later in the war, as patrols from Brazilian-held Crossdown Station