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 fortifications within the key gateway of Crossdown. A sparsely inhabited system, the dominant feature of Crossdown was a massive futuristic space station of posthuman origins: the eponymous Crossdown Station. Although the star system itself was navigable, Crossdown Station itself had been an exclusion zone up to that point, being defended by a powerful and highly sophisticated autonomous defense system. Through some unknown means, PACT intelligence were able to acquire security keys that spoofed the IFF protocols of the station, allowing vessels supplied with certain top secret codes to dock freely. Crossdown Station was quickly converted into an impenetrable PACT star fortress hosting barracks, signals assets and large dockyards for flotillas of patrols that soon made penetration of PACT supply lines via Crossdown a dangerous proposition 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 designed to exploit the defenders' reliance on the posthuman base station's black box systems. 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 PACT had. This would allow a fleet of cloaked vessels and mobile suits to approach unnoticed and unintercepted and launch a surprise attack on the station's occupants, destroying the flotillas based there and taking over the station to turn on its former owners. An elite multi-national force was organised for this 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 Operation Iona 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-production PACT suits and over half the fleet elements based at the station were destroyed at the docks before they could sortie. Special forces stormed the decks and quickly took control of some two thirds of Crossdown Station's interior and the ZOCU technical specialists were well underway on their own mission 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 posthuman network entered some form of quantum entanglement resulting in a hard reset of the whole system. Rebooted internal and external defenses quickly engaged and slaughtered 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 garrison forces were practically wiped out as well, but the alliance was able to redeploy a carrier battlegroup to the scene almost immediately. Within several weeks after that, PACT had managed to acquire a new key as well and regained control of Crossdown Station to begin rebuilding.

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. After the failure of Operation Iona and continued escalation of patrols from Crossdown Station, the Roboworld became more important as an alternative route leading to more confrontations and the eventual Battle of M3.