Diary23

• El Arish, August 23, 2039

It’s been a difficult time for the Seahawks, attempting to take the El Arish base and secure the resources they needed for the journey west. Upon their arrival to Egypt, Blackwood separated the dwindling Seahawks into two parts.

The first part, led by Adrian Blackwood himself, headed out for the El Arish base, using the info provided by Ibrahim.

They assaulted at dawn. The attack took the light Suez Incorporated units defending the area completely by surprise. Suez Incorporated officials, clearly not expecting their ambush in Cairo to fail, did not warn any corporate outposts in the area of the Seahawk threat, allowing Blackwood’s forces to overrun the entire area, capturing intact water and fuel caches in the process. Seahawk casualties were light – several armored vehicles were damaged and a dozen men and women lightly wounded. The local Suez Incorporated forces were completely routed, either making a run for it or giving up as soon as the shooting started.

The prisoners were rounded up and, seeing no purpose in keeping them, Blackwood had them released after several days with just enough supplies for them to not die on their way back to civilization. Several ineffective Suez Incorporated attacks were repelled during the weeks that followed but it quickly became clear that the corporate security forces, consisting of light infantry and several older armored vehicles, were no match for the Seahawk veterans. A small number of Suez personnel, sick of the corporate world, even decided to stay with the Seahawks and help the preparations.

The second part of the Seahawk forces, led by Kathryn Grey and Joshua Seagrove, tasked with scavenging enough supplies to allow them to make the journey west, fared differently.

From the first day, it quickly became clear that Kathryn Grey’s ruthless tactics would prevail. Driven by her “by any means necessary” creed, she paid no heed to the needs of the locals and almost always resorted to the use of force after what she perceived as “failed negotiations”, never giving more than an hour or two to the inhabitants of the villages, old military installations, supply stations and other places she found in the desert based on Fyodor Sokolov’s info.

Joshua Seagrove operated independently at first; always attempting to convince the locals to make some sort of trade, but Kathryn’s reputation of brutality soon preceded his attempts and he quickly found himself dealing with hostile, suspicious people, seeing him as a member of just another corporate task force sent to cleanse the region of “undesirables”.

One such case almost ended with a disaster – upon reaching the settlement of Al-Rayasan, the Seahawks under Joshua Seagrove found the place seemingly deserted. Carefully approaching its perimeter, the Seahawk armor was ambushed by a considerable mercenary force hiding amongst the village’s houses. Were it not for the timely intervention of reinforcements from the contingent of Kathryn Grey, the battle would have turned into a slaughter. In the end, the mercenary forces were repelled but the price of high – ten Seahawks were dead and the unit lost two of its precious Strykers.

The increased amount of hostility eventually forced Joshua Seagrove to abandon any attempts at diplomacy and join Kathryn Grey in her endeavor. After another week, negotiations were not even attempted anymore with any armed people automatically being treated as hostiles. The supplies were gathered but at a terrible cost – the entire region turned hostile to the Seahawks and several supply trucks were ambushed, diminishing the already low Seahawk resources even further.

But as it turned out, angry mercenaries would become the least of Seahawk’s trouble...