Iron Brigade was moved out of his current position and sent to the east as soon as the bird went down. The news came in as a shock, which literally sent him packing. There was no train ride there, he was flown in using a dual engine Chinook alongside the 271st Combat Search and Rescue team. Their first stop was Omega 3, this was to get his less experienced officers off of leading a defense force. After they were done with that the Chinook would swoop to the crash site in an attempt to recover any bodies or living units and destroy any electronics. There was an intense firefight going on in the remnants of Tybriss where the remaining forces of both sides were fighting it out.

Iron Brigade landed safely onto the 3rd TARMAC of the base, things had gone to shit real fast. The base was in high alert, most of the vehicles had been mobilized to the city and what hadn't been sent there was on it's way to Tybriss for infantry support. Things weren't looking good for the Omega 3 command. There was a blatant defensive hole in their plan, there weren't any vehicles to defend the base in case things really got out of hand. The most they had was a few helicopters, one F2 Phantom, and some defensive towers armed with heavy machine guns.

The sirens were on full blare, which urged Iron to rush to the center of operations. He ran through the halls of the barracks to take a shortcut, where ponies were in a scramble to get their gear on and ready.

'They're not going anywhere! They are all we got to defend this place!' A voice screamed in Iron's head.

Once he arrived at the command center, things didn't look better, ponies were yelling at eachother and practically falling over. They'd had no combat experience, whereas Iron was a seasoned veteran.

"All command personnel on deck, render attention!" He screamed louder than anything in the room, ponies all turned and stared.

"This is a defensive operation, I relieve the current First Sergeant from his duties and am now taking control as the head of this operation. What we do here is going to make history. How we act will determine how it is written. Just remember what you've been trained to do. None of you have had combat experience but now is a good time to get some. Ready units along the defensive perimeters and lock down the gates. No unit is to go anywhere without my knowledge."

He looked at the screen to see the familiar grainy footage taken from a C2 blackhawk, in the image was Tybriss military base. Things weren't looking good for them, the thermal imagery on the other screen showed what looked like a solid 300 hostile units headed from Yakyakistan with nothing to stop them now that there was no Tybriss. Not only that, but Tybriss was engaged in a balls out gunfight. The tracers were flying in all directions, there was radio communications going fluently through them, keeping a line in check.

Iron Brigade got on the line with them.

"This is General Iron Brigade, command of the Equestrian land armed forces. What is your situation?"

A hazy, zoned out but panicked voice came through the other side.

"This is Private Star, Northern Star. We're taking heavy machine gun fire from the northern route! We've lost at last 30 guys on my location! The NCO's are dead, we're pretty much shooting blind!"

'Well you're doing real damn well for shooting blind'

"Keep the fire going, you have roughly 300 units headed south towards you and we're working on getting units into your location, keep tight."

"Sir, we lost a helicopter."

"I know, keep fighting."

If there was one thing Iron knew, it was that nothing was more demoralizing than seeing a helicopter get shot out of the sky.

"Sir, when is rescue coming?"

"We cannot take you out of that zone, you're in a vital spot and we need to hold it to cut reinforcements off. You're staying there."

"I'm gonna fucking die here!"

Iron knew this feeling, he knew it too well. He'd fought in two wars, one in Yakyakistan and another in Mexicolt fighting a warlord. It was hard to fight it, but he couldn't pull the kid out. All he could do is say what he wanted to be told when he was on the ground.

"Hey listen, if you die would you want to die sitting in a corner or with your hoofs on a rifle making sure those motherfuckers paid for each life they thought they could take?"

The radio went silent, and so did the room, Iron didn't realize that this was on the intercom and that everypony in the base could hear it.

"Like hell I'll kill every one of those bastards."

A cheer roared from room to room, the ponies were in a need for a morale boost, so maybe this was exactly what they needed.

"Good, get in the fight."

"Sir, units are low on ammunition, requesting Combat Search And Rescue to bring some?"

"CSAR is unarmed but the bird is carrying ammo, he'll jettison it as soon as he lands."

"Roger that Omega 3. Northern Star out."

The conversation didn't do all that much for Northern, of anything it probably made the situation worse. Seconds turned to days as he kept his eyes peered down into a pile of rubble. There were Yaks on the other side, if he saw movement he'd fire. He stood there for minutes, he'd managed to get a few survivors on the same corner, since his old guard post got hit by a RPG he was down on the ground 20 yards away.

He kept his eyes on it so long he didn't hear the rudders of the AH-6's coming in for a strafe run. They fired in a direct line along the
end of the rubble that Northern Star was watching. He saw blood and limbs fly from behind cover. It was like a scene from a war movie. That was when it dawned on him that this wasn't a movie, this was real life. He was in the shitstorm for real.

Author's Notes:

Yea I'm just gonna stop it with the filler for now.