The second entry in the "100 Ways" challenge is here at last. This inspiring story was written by Pajus. Enjoy

x Rei

Proclamation: Now you're gonna get it, Meatbag!
by Pajus

The sudden death of Colonel Carter brought fear into the hearts of all IOA members - save one. None of them knew how exactly he managed to do it, but it was clear to them that General Arkadij Semyonovich Golikov was responsible for her death. In the two previous years, several of his opponents disappeared, died from suspicious accidents, or committed suicide under mysterious circumstances. It was never proved that Golikov had anything to do with these cases, but everyone could see his career getting a significant boost after his opponent of the time was removed.

Golikov was the one who opposed Carter's posting in Atlantis the most. "It would place the last key Stargate-related military asset into the hands of the US Air Force!" he warned his colleagues. Their failure to listen finally convinced him that the time for politics and compromises was over. Golikov decided that a drastic show of force was necessary to prove his point.

His friendship with General O'Neill had paid off during his preparations. Golikov convinced O'Neill that Carter had found another man in Atlantis. O'Neill had been in love with the now deceased Colonel for the better part of a decade, and the news - fictional as they had been - broke his heart. The time-proven combination of pride and love. It killed millions and saved no one, Golikov thought to himself, recalling the naïveté of his American counterpart.

And now he had one more thing on his mind: One week after Carter's death, Colonel Sheppard touched a strange crystal, infecting himself with an unknown alien entity. The entity killed Dr. Heightmeyer and nearly killed Dr. McKay before it was stopped, but that's when another unbelievable thing happened. Despite her best efforts to cover up what actually happened, Golikov knew from his most reliable sources that Dr. Keller used the defibrillator improperly. Colonel Sheppard was now dying from hyper acute liver failure as a result of her actions.

Golikov didn't mind this. He believed that the less American soldiers there were in the expedition's leadership, the better. Besides, from the Atlantis mission reports, Golikov knew that Sheppard was a bad soldier - who would be in prison had he been a Russian - but Keller's performance gave him cause for concern. This time, her incompetence caused the death of an American soldier, but it is only a matter of time before it kills a soldier of the Rodina!

"Proud report: Master, I have completed my task successfully." Golikov looked up from his paperwork, startled by the sudden appearance of his servant. The rubber plates on its metallic feet gave HK-47 the ability to move in complete silence. "Query: Are there any other meatbags that you wish removed from the universe, Master?"

"There is one more target for you in Atlantis," Golikov said as he handed the droid a file with 'top secret' and 'eyes only' seals on it. It didn't take the droid a single minute to read through it. The target didn't have such a distinguished career and the file wasn't even 50 pages long. "You can do whatever you please with this target. I don't care. I just want her gone."

"Confirmation: As you wish, Master." HK didn't obey Golikov's orders just because he was programmed to follow the will of his master. He actually enjoyed working for this man. Golikov had plenty of opponents that needed to be removed. HK always had targets to slaughter, and Golikov's standing order to make the deaths look like anything but a murder gave him some sport – it forced him to think and consider every move on the difficult path towards pleasing his master.

The Russian General once again equipped his servant with the newest computer codes for both Atlantis and the Daedalus and wished him good luck. The droid used his codes to ask the Daedalus' computer to beam him up to a storage room with equipment for Atlantis, and deleted the record about the use of the transport beam from the system logs. When that was done, HK set himself into sleep mode once more. Three days later, the Daedalus departed for Atlantis with a droid that would activate upon their arrival.

18 days later, a directive in his control cluster woke HK from his slumber. After fully reactivating his systems, the droid connected himself to the astronomy computer and confirmed that it was 1 AM in Atlantis. HK immediately beamed to am uninhabited part of the city where there were no active security cameras.

Now that he was in Atlantis, HK connected himself to the city's security system, setting the security cameras on his way into a continuous loop, tracking and evading the patrols that could see him. He had the assassination planned to look like a suicide, and for that, HK took the biggest syringe he could get in the medical storage room.

After 30 more minutes of playing cat and mouse with the patrols, HK finally arrived at his target's quarters. He loaded his custom-made blaster rifle and opened the door to see two more droids standing at the opposite wall with their backs on him. They were the same shape as him, only their colour was grey instead of rust. HK-47 recognized them as the HK-50 units. "Irritated query: What are you doing here?" The question began to wake Keller up.

"Self-evident answer: We are modifying the halon system of the city to murder all organics inside." The two HK-50s turned around to face their older brother, who aimed his weapon at them.

HK-47 frequently heard from Golikov how much was invested into Atlantis to ensure its operation and knew his master would not be pleased should these droids succeed in their task and take the city for whatever masters they had. "Determined statement: That I can not allow."

"Statement: I do not understand what you wish to gain by fighting us. You have no chance of victory. Recognition: You are obsolete. You kill specific organics and ONLY when permitted to. Proud statement: We need no such orders. We have been programmed without inhibition, without restraint. We kill who we want, when we want. We have destroyed planets, assassinated economies; we have wiped out entire races, ended hostilities. Query: Do you understand what this means?" Keller was now fully awake, watching the exchange between the droids with her mouth hanging open in amazement, unable to say or do anything.

"Answer: Yes. It means that you will never understand. When I kill, when I dispatch a target, it is not about 'wanton slaughter'; about 'bodycount'. It is about finesse, function. Doing more with less. It is 'art'." The three droids in her room talking about killing in such a way made Keller scared beyond description.

"Scoffing statement: Oh yes - 'art'. It is pathetic that you cling to the belief that your function somehow transcends your construction. There is no higher purpose in our behavior core. Only assassination, murder and the propagation of our units. Proclamation: When we dispose of this city, we shall move on! There are organics throughout the universe and we will murder them all! The stars belong to us."

On that moment, Keller made the last mistake in her life: she began screaming like a little girl. The two HK-50 droids turned and fired their weapons, both hitting the head of the young doctor, causing it to explode in a ball of blood, brains and bone. Then they tried to turn again to shoot HK-47, but were not fast enough. Two precise blaster shots later, both HK-50 units were lying on the floor, smoking holes where their control clusters used to be. HK-47 fired more shots into the memory cores of his younger brothers to ensure the complete destruction of evidence. "Mocking evaluation: You were impulsive, crude, unsophisticated, and now you are deceased."

HK-47 retrieved the blaster rifles the HK-50s brought and had the city's internal sensors search for the characteristic signature of the communication transmitters of all HK-series droids. He could find none. With this knowledge, HK quickly ran for the parts of the city, where the internal sensors were not active and had himself beamed back to the Daedalus.

AN: "Rodina" is the Russian word for "Motherland"

All characters belong to MGM/Sci-Fi. The characters of the HK-47 and the HK-50 protocol/assassination droids belong to the fine people at Lucas Arts, Obsidian and Bioware.