Free Mists of Everness (The War of the Dreaming) by John C. Wright

Waylock. Old man, tall; bald, big white eyebrows.”
    “I ain’t telling you shit!”
    There was a whistling roar, rushing from high pitch to low, and the iron hammer flew into the room and smacked into Peter’s palm. The hammerhead was still smoking and steaming, and a drop of the gore that coated it fell from the hammerhead and lightly touched the soldier’s cheek.
    “Second floor! Room 201! Corner room on the far side!”
    “Now tell me how sorry you are for pissing me off.”
    “I’m sorry, sir!” the young soldier barked.
    “I’ll accept how and when I damn well please. Morpheus! Knock ’im out!”
    A blanket of warm numbness stole through the young soldier’s body and closed his eyes. The pain in his broken arm receded, and he fell into a profound, deep sleep.

5
    The World of Mists and Shadows
    I
    Two men stood where the slabs of concrete and macadam were buckled and torn. The roof overhead was a mass of splintered steel girders, swaying remnants of lighting fixtures, torn wires. In the middle of the garage; past where the heavy steel doors that had once covered the truck bay lay, rested a huge, crumpled wreck. Several machine-gun barrels protruded from the mass, twisted at strange angles. One tread of the vehicle was unwound.
    “Tell me what I’m looking at, Van Dam.” The first man was dressed in a well-tailored business suit, a yellow slicker over that. On his head he wore a hard hat.
    The second man had a thin, gray moustache, and wore a transparent plastic coat over his uniform. “That was our armored personnel carrier. Mr. Wentworth. Three inches of titanium alloy armor. The weapon struck only into the engine block. You can see where the prow is caved in? Those big triangular shards?”
    “Yes.”
    “See how they are bent backward at the tips? That was caused by the backward passage of the weapon as it ripped itself out of the impact area.”
    “And that?” Wentworth pointed upward.
    “When the men tried to come out of the vehicle, he knocked over the columns and brought down those chunks of concrete on top of the hatch, trapping them inside. It was pretty clear he was trying not to hurt the men.”
    “Fourteen dead? And that’s not trying to hurt them?”
    “Mostly from friendly fire. He was pulling his punches,” said Van Dam.
    “Hm. Looks like he knew just where to hit the vehicle.”
    “It was Gus Waylock, after all.”
    Wentworth seemed surprised. “You’ve heard of him?”
    “Yes, sir. Captain Peter Augustus Waylock, Twenty-eighth Infantry, Medal of Honor, several Purple Hearts. Very highly decorated. Some places, his name is legend.”
    “Well. I wonder if that helped him. Show me the cross corridor.”
    “Careful here.”
    They walked.
    Van Dam said, “This hole here led us astray for a while. We thought he had gone out of the building here, because of this hole. Here’s the stairwell. Look out for that door.”
    “I’m okay. I can step over it. What happened here?”
    “We think he threw the weapon directly down the stairwell to collapse the stairs. Lost two men here. See where the supports are shorn? The lab boys say they can estimate the kinetic energy of the weapon in motion from that. The weapon strikes with something equivalent to a heavy antitank round.”
    “What happened down that way?”
    “Sonic boom blew out the windows all along that corridor. The weapon can fly faster than Mach One.”
    “But why did you think he was in this corridor at this point? Wasn’t he still traveling in a medical equipment cart by then?”
    Van Dan said, “At this point we think he was giving false orders over our radios. He had Kilmer’s walkie-talkie. When we found out, he ordered a radio silence.”
    “He ordered?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And that’s what caused the thing at the cross corridor?”
    “Yes. This way. Look out for that broken glass.”
    “I see it. Now, how did he get onto this level if he didn’t actually come down the stairwell?”
    “We found some