His voice sounded grief-stricken. Man up, kid. Your dad shouldn’t have been shooting at me with military grade hardware. I tapped him on the head with my gauntleted fist.

He flopped backward, just a skinny boy in a Jihad for Jesus tee shirt. An Ishtar blaster pistol lay near his hand. Not so menacing anymore. The sound got the other man turning. He had an assault rifle. There was a low percentage chance that it might damage my kinetic armor at this range. I pointed the empty Magnum at his head and said, “Don’t even think about it.”

My helmet provided the translation this time. In the two seconds he spent considering it, I crossed the roof and knocked him out too.

The kid’s blaster would have been my first choice but like all advanced Weapon Ship products it would be bio-locked to its user. I grabbed one of the locally produced assault rifles instead, and as many bandoleers of ammunition as I could. I found a couple more sidearms and a six pack of AP grenades. The drone feed showed me looking like a bandit warlord. I checked the charge on the pulse cannon. Thirty seconds and it would be at peak again. Good.

A faint flicker of guilt about the kid’s dad passed through my mind. I decided I’d give the redneck Nazis another chance. “Citizens, go home. Or it will be tears before bedtime.”

Dave’s synthesized voice roared my words overhead. Retranslation informed me that Dave had told the locals that we should end things peaceably or there would be much grieving and lamentation before they laid their heads upon their pillows once more.

Maybe he was just screwing with their heads. Or mine. He likes to do that.

Onboard threat assessment systems shifted the drone to a new position. A chimney near him disintegrated under the hail of bullets as the militia responded to my offer of peace or possible lamentation.

“Thank you for your feedback, Citizens,” Dave said. Passive aggressive little bastard.

I swung the pulse cannon around so that it was pointing at the open square. I turned the settings to wide-beam. Dave showed me the largest concentration of militiamen. They hunkered down behind the remains of a fountain. Several were bringing their Panzerfaust Neo rockets to bear. There were two militiamen on the roof with me.