Snipes inhaled deeply through the cigar, but it did nothing to curb his irritation. Today it was entirely possible he would start breaking necks long before they hit planet side. There wasn't a particular reason he was so irate. He just was, which as anyone who knew him had long ago realized, this was more than enough reason for him to start doing any number of violent and often messy things. Snipes wasn't usually a homicidal maniac, but every now and then when he was in the mood he'd be tying optic nerves together and practicing dentistry with a ball-peen hammer.

Snipes swaggered angrily down the halls, every now and then pushing someone out of his way when they were idiotic enough to get in it. He wasn't sure where he was going, it wasn't that he didn't know where he was, he just didn't see any reason to go anywhere specific. He had already picked up his armor and weapons. Someone had made a giant fuss about his shotgun, but he had the magic words 'piss off' and never hesitated to use them. So now he walked down the halls, helmet strapped to his belt, a S-II carbine on his back and one on his shoulder, his great shotgun bounced with his step on his right let and cigar stuck in his mouth causing his mouth and nose to spew smoke every time he exhaled.

Snipes swung by the cafeteria, but there was nothing particularly edible looking, so he moved on. Wandering the ship was beginning to get boring and the last thing the Dominion needed was a bored Snipes on board, so he made his way to hanger, in hopes the rest of the group would show up and they could get out of there early. Snipes wouldn't normally even wait for that group, but it sounded like he was going to need cover.

Of course Snipes wasn't so lucky, he got there long before anyone else and spent that time making everyone around him equally as miserable. Which in turn was putting him in a better mood. Now he had something to laugh at. A couple PFC's showed up early and Snipes proceeded to send them running for just about everything so he didn't have to get up. Maybe my rank is good for something after all. As they were scurrying about doing tasks that the shuttle crew were supposed to do (Snipes liked them,) Snipes leaned back in his seat and dozed off.

When he finally awoke it was from having his shoulder shaken roughly. He opened one eye, it was one of the PFC's. Great, what do they want now?

"We've landed, Sergeant."

"Beautiful." Just what I wanted to do, put a helmet back on.

Snipes unclipped his helmet and swung it over his head, making sure everything sealed. The trooper looked at him expectantly, he pretty much ignored him and made his way to the loading door. Here he threw his arms up and screamed.

"Let there be light!"

Whether it was already planned or not the door began opening slowly before the hydraulics were released and it slammed into the dust, kicking up spirals that were quickly carried away in the strong wind. Snipes already wanted to go back to bed. He was really going to have to indulge in some bloody slaughter or there was no way his mood was improving.

"Alright, I'm in a particularly bad mood and I've done this kind of thing before, I want to get in and get out. If we break up into teams this will be faster. Lets get this done." Snipes said what he had to say then switched his ear piece off. He really didn't want to talk much.

He set off for the entrance as quickly as he could, it was still dark, which was probably a good thing. There had been a degree of vagueness in what exactly daylight meant on this planet, Snipes assumed it wasn't good. He set a quick pace so he could get back to the damned shuttle and have a smoke. It wasn't far to the caves anyway, although if you weren't looking it would be easy to miss the entrance, just a small hole, enough for a person to fit through. Snipes signaled a stop and tossed a frag grenade in because he didn't feel like sticking his head in. Once it was done exploding Snipes crawled in first, it was a tight fit at first, the locals probably couldn't use it, who knew why it was even there at all.

When he finally made it in the cave widened a bit and Snipes was able to stretch. He broke a couple glow sticks and tossed them around to light the area up a little, although his visor didn't do all that bad, and he kept a infrared overlay active on his HUD. He keyed his ear piece back on.

"Alright, come on in, nothing down here to bite you." Snipes kept his hand on his S-II grip anyway.

One by one they made their way in, although it was clearly easier for those near the end as the whole had widened a little. Once they were all brushed off and oriented again Snipes started walking, they followed if for no reason other than they weren't sure what else to do. Snipes honestly didn't care what they did. He followed the tunnel, it hadn't branched off yet, not once, but once it did they'd have to decide how they were going to split up. Again Snipes didn't care, he was going to go where it looked like there was something to dismember. That was when he caught a IR bloom on his HUD. He smiled behind it and picked up the pace.

"Sergeant, what's the deal?"

"I see something to kill."

"Oh."

There were a couple bends in the crude tunnel before he came to a T intersection. He hung his head and swore.

"Alright, so who wants to kill things?" Hands rose. "Who wants to walk around in a tunnel letting their suit map the place?" Hands fell. "That's what I thought, fine, you and you, come with me. The rest of you are going to have to further split up. Keep your mapping information flowing between us and we shouldn't have to go over the same place twice."

Snipes darted off, followed by two others, Snipes thought they were DD, but he wasn't sure. For now he'd lay their squad affiliation aside because he really wanted to kill something. The specially modified suites were only a little heavier than the standard Rad-Trooper armor but had one very nice feature, once they had entered the caves each suit started tracking their movements and sending out an alternately passive/active radar signal to map out the caves. Each suit sent its information to a processor on their landing shuttle which relayed it to the Dominion. Snipes assumed they also stored the information locally in case the node was destroyed. Snipes also wondered why this wasn't standard. Probably expensive.

Snipes rounded another corner and pulled up short, dodging back behind the turn again, the two other troopers ran into his back. There were a group of head signatures ahead, although they were too far ahead for Snipes visor to pick them up in the visible light spectrum. He smiled anyway. Finally he'd get to kill something.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Gates answered Orobos’ question. “When confronted with overwhelming power, primitive cultures bow down. Its self-preservation. They’ll keep doing this until they realize that they could probably overrun us.”

He charged up the rotary blaster; the barrels started spinning again. “Plus they’re afraid of this. 166 shots per second kinda scares anyone.”

Gates checked the clip counter, and seeing it with about a hundred bullets left, dropped that clip and slammed in a new one.

Then the Cleoggi realized that they were only three, and charged.

“Yeehaw!” yelled Gates, scything the Z6 back and forth, watching as hundreds of rounds impacted into the fray. The sergeant was blasting away at point-blank range with his shotgun, and Orobos had a carbine in one hand and his trusty vibroaxe in the other.

Cleoggi kept charging and falling, dead, often with dozens of holes in them, some with their heads removed.

Finally, they retreated deeper into the caves. The stomrtroopers followed slowly, reloading weapons. They just followed the Infrared signatures deeper and deeper until they found the main camp and could call in the other squad. Then, they’d complete their mission.

Snipes grunted as the critters charged, his first carbine failed after his second burst of fire and he was forced to use it as a bludgeon until upon blocking a club blow the rifle broke in half, he ducked stepped back, swinging the second carbine off his back and into his right hand, but the natives were getting close, he charged up to the closest one, getting too close for it to swing its club at him, and stuck the second carbine in its mouth, pulling the trigger and letting the gun wreck full-auto havoc on it's innards. As he fell its jaws locked around the gun and took it from Snipes had to the ground. Snipes swore loudly and pulled his shotgun from its holster. The shotgun was more effective at ripping flesh and rending bone, its report was also much more frightening and at first it seemed to startle the indigenous troublemakers. Their second of hesitation was the death sentence for many of them, and the remainder scattered, possibly to regroup, possibly to run away. Either way Snipes felt like killing all of them.

They followed after the Cleoggi, their infrared signatures were almost blinding, a great mass of them was ahead of the group. And there were only three of them. Snipes signaled for a stop.

"As I'm sure you can tell, there's a lot of them up there, lets take five here and I'll work on a plan. Note: It's probably going to involve explosions." Snipes leaned against a wall and sunk into a crouch, resting on his heels. "Oh, here," Snipes pulled his bandoleer of power packs off and tossed it to the one still using an S-II, "I don't need it."

After a few minutes Snipes didn't have a plan, he hadn't really been thinking very hard, his head wasn't working like that today, he stood up, stretched and signaled for them to get moving. There were only a a hundred or so yards until they reached the heat blooms. Snipes readied a frag grenade in his left hand. As they neared the entrance something that resembled a plan began forming, in spite of Snipes best efforts. Snipes would toss grenade, rotary guy would start mowing down the enemy, Snipes and other guy would cover him until there was really very little left standing. This was a plan Snipes liked. Mostly because it involved lots of dead things. He relayed the plan, and since the entire idea of attacking such a group was usually considered stupid, they only had minimal complaints.

They reached the opening, but it was still too dark for them to see much besides the IR blooms. Snipes tossed the frag grenade into the middle of them, then stepped behind the rotary and let it go to work on them. Even a rotary had to reload someday though, they'd have to retreat further into the tunnel, make the Cleoggi's numbers count for little. Snipes was determined to pile the bodies high today.

Snipes wasn't sure how this was helping them map out the tunnels. There was probably a way they could of done it that didn't involve outright slaughter, but today that's what Snipes was interested in, outright slaughter. Still, according to his map the progress was coming along well, although for all he knew there could be hundreds of miles of tunnel left. Maybe after this fight he'd start taking it more seriously.

Gates was standing at the front of the trio, blasting away with his Z6 Rotary assault minigun and humming some stupid jingle he’d heard on the news a few days earlier. Thousands of rounds thumped into the mass of Infrared contacts, cutting dozens down. Orobos and the other sergeant were tossing grenades over his head and generally killing anything that made an end run against his position.

Gates looked at the ammo counter, spotting it at a few hundred and dropping rapidly, so Garryll switching the Z6 to auto fire, and kept firing one handed. His other hand reached back into his pack, and grabbed another clip. The Z6 was almost out of ammo, and then ticked to the end of its clip.

“Reloading!” yelled the junior non-com. He hit the ‘eject’ button on the rifle, dropped out the clip. Before the thing even hit the ground he was slapping his new one into place. He then hit the charging lever and started the barrels spinning again. It took about seven seconds, during which the other two Stormtroopers fired into the approaching swarm. Gates flung a grenade side-armed. It detonated, flinging a half-dozen Cleogi upward.

He flicked the inter-squad comm. on. “Hey, you guys gettin’ as many contacts?”

“No. We’ve been killin’ ‘em four, five at a time.”

“Poor you! We’ve been a-burnin’ these fellas down by the dozens. Ha ha!”

“Scuse me, sarge. Firing!” Gates brought the Z6 back up and opened up into the fray.

Gates followed the two sergeants down the tunnel. He checked his weapons. Both carbines fully loaded and not yet even tested. Z6, loaded, cooling.

Gates walked backwards, covering their six. The other two men walked dual point. Gates scanned with his Infra red gear. He half turned. “Wonder who’s gonna buy the beer?”

“Eh, I dunno,” the other DD trooper responded.

“Hmm. Maybe we kin get one of the… what the hell?” Gates began, and then spotted something huge on his Infra red.

“Ehh, sarge, we got somthin’, real big. But still in one spot. Bigger’n human or my large Dragoon friend here.”

The two sergeants turned. “Holy shit!” muttered the other Dragoon. “What the hell is that?”

“I don’t know,” the other man said, “but I know we’re going to kill it.”

They walked backwards into an open area; sort of an opening. Gates checked his radar; just falling back Cleoggi, behind, and one big-ass contact up ahead. The two sergeants flanked the opening. Gates stood out in the open, Z6 at the ready.

Then three giant Cleoggi burst out of the opening. “Damn, they makin’ ‘em big!” yelled Gates, firing the Z6.

166 rounds impacted the first, but that hardly slowed it down. It ran at Gates, waving its arms around and making it look large; the other two Stormtroopers were in similar predicaments. Then the thing was upon Garryll. It knocked the assault weapon out of his hands, and then hit him across the room. He hit hard, and fell. He did a quick check of his suit’s integrity while he caught his breath.

Then he stood, pulled both carbines from his shoulder harnesses, and opened up. High-energy lasers flew instantly from the barrels to the massive beast that was again charging the non-com. Gates dove to the side, and kept up the barrage. His squadmates were also fighting for dear life against their marks.

Gates ran around the juggernaut, firing his carbines; they clicked empty. “Damn!” he shouted. He dropped the rifles, diving again, and unsheathed his vibroblade. He quickly looked around, while the thing turned for another run. He could see his Z6 a few feet to his right. Then the Cleoggi mutant charged again. He jumped aside, but it grabbed him in a bear hug, anticipating the maneuver. He stabbed it in the eye. It dropped him. He dove for the Z6, and pulled the charging lever. “Die, you asshole!” he yelled, firing the multi-barrel gun into the face and upper torso of the Cleoggi.

He turned to see if the other two Stormtroopers needed help.

Gates opened up with the Z6 and the others, including Snipes and Orobos (who came in with Gates) opened up with their weapons. Snipes having lost his carbine ran up to where we weren't shooting and started tearing left and right with his vibroblade. Ror fired off a couple of bursts and took one down. The black room was soon lit up by the muzzle fire of the 5 guns opening up on the Cleoggi. The battle was soon over and Ror looked around at the bodies and blood spread about on the floor. He felt a mix between being sick and sad over having to slaughter them.

They all nodded to each other and proceeded down the tunnel. Ror was in the back with Zafo and Hart, the three who had just joined them took forward and scanned the entire area as we proceeded forward. Ror kept glancing over his shoulder to make sure that none of them were behind them ready to strike. For about half a mile the tunnels were empty of Cleoggi, Ror figured the fighting had scared them off or there were no more in this area of the tunnel. They reached another room and stopped in front of the entrance.

"Think there will be more of them in there?" Zafo asked reloading his weapon.

"Probably, I hope there will be many that I can slaughter," Snipes said with a semi laugh at the end.

"Hey Gates how much ammo you got left?" Hart asked reloading s well.

"Uhmmm about 100 rounds in the clip and three more on me," Gates called out as he read the ammo counter, "How long till the sun faces us? Won't our weapons not function for four hours?"

Ror looked to the took left corner of his HUD, "Uhmm we have 2 more hours before, and Doc said if we were underground we might not be affected."

"He said if we were far underground, we are only about a quarter of a mile under I think." Orobos chimed in.

"Well how far is far down?" Zafo asked

"It doesn't matter we will just slaughter them with our vibroblades when it comes time," Snipes said, Ror knew he must be smiling at the notion by his voice.

"Well anyway we should clear as much space as we can before we get to that point," Gates said looking towards the next room, "We don't know how big or how many Cleoggi will be in there if any so I suggest we use a standard breach and clear tactic to clear it out."

Everyone nodded in agreement and split between both sides of the door. Orobos and Gates both pulled out frags and pulled the pins. They launched both of them in opposite directions into the room and waited for the explosion. After they went off the six stared filing into the room. Ror was the last one into the room and almost dropped his rifle in shock, "Oh my god," was all he could utter. The room was huge and filled with probably a hundred Cleoggi. He quickly shouldered his rifle as the rest fanned out in the room and opened up.

“We’re in trouble,” muttered one of the other soldiers.

The squad spread out, firing rifles, grenades, and shotguns into the mob. “We ain’t in trouble yet!” yelled Gates. “We get in trouble when we run outta ammo!”

The Z6 in his hands immediately charged up, firing dozens of rounds into Cleoggi at point-blank range. “Yeehaw, com’n get, assholes!” He fired another long burst, then watched as the ammo counter hit zero. He dropped the Z6, as he had no time to reload. He chucked a grenade, lifting a half-dozen of the creatures off their feet.

He reached for one of his carbines, grabbed it, and fired at head height; he killed a half dozen with his first clip. He gestured to his squadmates that he was moving his position, and scooped up the Z6. He jumped on a pile of corpses, and then up onto an elevated area. There, he was relatively safe from melee attacks, and could spend some time reloading. He slapped another power pack into his carbine, slid the clip of the Z6 out and shoved another box of ammunition onto it. He checked to see if it was locked, then rammed it into place and pulled the charging lever. He sprayed rounds into the rear of the mob, bunching them up, then dropped a grenade into the most dense cluster of Cleoggi.

Several went flying, but most couldn’t; they were too tightly packed. He fired again, and checked the other stormtroopers’ positions, highlighted by extra-bright infrared signatures, due to the firing of their weapons; compared to the Cleoggi masses, at least.