The Price of Freedom

by Chris Kennedy

  The Price of Freedom

  Book Four of The Fallen World

  By

  Chris Kennedy

  PUBLISHED BY: Blood Moon Press

  Copyright © 2019 Chris Kennedy

  All Rights Reserved

  Get the free Four Horseman prelude story “Shattered Crucible”

  and discover other Blood Moon Press titles at:

  http://chriskennedypublishing.com/

  * * * * *

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  * * * * *

  Cover Design by Elartwyne Estole

  * * * * *

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Epilogue

  About Chris Kennedy

  Connect with Chris Kennedy

  Excerpt from Book One of The Fallen World

  Excerpt from Book One of The Devil’s Gunman

  Excerpt from Book One of The Shadow Lands

  * * * * *

  Chapter One

  “Your objective is to infiltrate—”

  The chairman was interrupted by a strobe light and a horn that could have woken the dead. “What’s that?” I asked. Although I’d been with Teledyne a long time, I didn’t spend much time at any of the headquarters facilities. My job took a lot of training, and I was gone on missions. A lot. It was also Sunday morning, and I confess to being a little hungover; the horn was a most unwelcome addition to my day.

  “Missile launch,” the chairman called over his shoulder as he ran from the room.

  I doubted the lights and horn—damn it was loud—would have been necessary if we’d launched missiles, so I expected it was from one of our competitors. Probably the bastards at Obsidian; things had been heating up for a while.

  The chairman was older and slower than I, so I caught up to him quickly as he raced through the corridor. We only stopped once—at a scanner for his handprint to unlock a door I’d never been through—then we arrived at “The Situation Room.”

  We went in, and I could see the situation was best described as “pandemonium.” People yelled back and forth, lights flashed, and—if anything—the horn was even louder. I would cheerfully have ripped my ears from my head if I could; sometimes augmented hearing was a pain in the ass.

  The chairman yelled a couple of times, trying to get everyone’s attention, but he wasn’t very successful.

  “Shut the hell up!” I roared. I’d been through military training; I knew how to capture a group’s attention. The room went silent, except for the God-awful horn.

  “Thank you,” the chairman said, nodding once to me. “Could someone turn off that horn?”

  He paused, giving me a chance to look around the enormous space, which held a large control room butted up against an auditorium. The control room side had a large conference table ringed with large consoles. All were currently flashing; red and yellow lights predominated. The screen in the auditorium showed a map of North America, centered on the Pacific Northwest, with lots of lines converging on it from a variety of locations, worldwide. No one sat in the auditorium. I shrugged; apparently, it wasn’t a very good movie.

  The horn, blessedly, ceased its wail, and the chairman asked in a normal voice, “What have we got?”

  “We had an inadvertent launch from one of our sites,” one of the technicians related. “Apparently, they were cleaning one of their panels and a missile launched.”

  “Well, detonate it!” the chairman exclaimed.

  “We did, but those bastards at Obsidian must have thought it was some sort of EMP to try to take out their facilities; we now have multiple launches from Obsidian sites throughout the world, even some we didn’t know had weapons,” one of the technicians related. “Some of the smaller companies are now launching, too. Damn, there go the Dellik sites. Almost everyone has their missiles in the air now except us. Most of our biggest sites are going to get pounded. Defenses are activating, but there’s no way we’re going to stop them all.” He shrugged. “We didn’t know Obsidian had that many, or that we’d be targeted by as many of the smaller corporations as we have.”

  “Why haven’t we returned the favor?”

  “I haven’t received any orders to launch. The Board was just sitting down to discuss the response.”

  “Obviously, the Board isn’t going to be able to come to an agreement, as I’m not up there. On my authority, I want you to launch. Launch everything! Turn Obsidian into radioactive rubble. I want to be able to see the East Coast’s glow from here.”

  “Like we’ll be here to see it,” one of the other techs muttered to his system panel. Most people probably couldn’t have heard him. I did.

  “Yes sir,” the technician replied. He turned to the console closest to the auditorium. “Launch all missiles.”

  “Yes sir!” the man at the console exclaimed. He took off a necklace which had a key hanging from it and inserted the key into his console. He turned it, and a red light began glowing on a button under a wire cage. He removed the wire cage and pushed the button.

  Immediately, the lights began strobing again, and the God-awful horn began wailing anew. I had been wrong—launching our missiles did activate the horn. I thought it was a pretty serious design flaw.

  Happily, a technician silenced the horn and killed the strobe lights without having to be told this time. On the screen, lines appeared from our locations, heading out toward where the lines were tracking in from. There was going to be one hell of a nuclear sunrise this morning.

  “All birds away, except one!” the man who pushed the
button said, looking at his console.

  “Which one?” asked the chairman.

  The technician consulted the board next to him. “We had a missile failure. The missile targeted on central Philadelphia failed to launch.”

  “That’s one of their new headquarters sites!” the chairman exclaimed. “We just found out about it!”

  “Sorry, sir,” the technician said. “I can’t do anything about it.”

  “What do you mean? Use one of the other missiles! Retarget it in flight!”

  “I can’t,” the man said woefully. “Once they’re launched, they can’t be called back.”

  Today was the day to expose design flaws, apparently.

  “Well…well…” the chairman sputtered. “Use another one!”

  “There are no more. You said to launch them all, and I did. All of our missiles, aside from the one that broke, are airborne—there are no more missiles.”

  “Philadelphia has to go…those bastards deserve to die more than anyone else,” the chairman said, as if speaking to himself. His eyes searched the room, looking for someone who had a better answer, and he startled as I came into view. “You!” he exclaimed.

  I smiled. I could already see where this was going. “Me?”

  “Yes, you, Rinardi.” He pointed to the door. “Go! Go to Philadelphia and kill all of Obsidian’s management that you find at their headquarters there.” He looked over at the screen; the missiles were noticeably closer. He sighed, but then he squared his shoulders and stood a little straighter. “It doesn’t appear there will be anything left here to return to, so this is your final mission. Kill all of the Obsidian management in Philadelphia, and then you are released from service.”

  “He doesn’t have much time…” the technician said. “He’ll need to be at least five miles away in ten minutes, tops, or he’s going to glow like the rest of us.”

  “Go!” the chairman yelled. “Avenge us!”

  “It’s been great working for you, Boss,” I said with a nod.

  Then I spun and ran.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Two

  I reached the building’s exit with nine minutes remaining and raced to my motorcycle, dodging a parking lot full of cars, all jockeying to get through the gates simultaneously. Yes, everyone worked on Sunday. Because, why not? There were people working there 24/7; customers expected service now, after all. I threw my helmet on and started the bike. Giving it gas, I roared through the lot, jumping onto the medians when I needed to and cutting between the cars. One of them hit my rear wheel as it tried to block me and almost knocked me off. Any other time, I would probably have killed him for it.

  Killed “her,” I saw as I looked back. The woman’s eyes were frantic as she slammed into the car in front of her, then stood on the gas, trying to get the car to move. She was in full panic mode, probably trying to get home to her kids to see them one last time. Unless her kids lived super close, though, that wasn’t going to happen. Luckily for her, I was unarmed—no one goes to a meeting with the chairman with a weapon. Not that I needed one to kill someone, but I would have had to get off my bike to deal with her, and I didn’t have the time. She didn’t either, and I could tell from her eyes she knew it, too.

  Eight minutes remained as I squeezed past two cars that had collided going through the gate. Most of the drivers trapped behind the wreck were honking, and their combined horns melded into a cacophony almost as loud as the horn inside the building. The noise didn’t help the traffic move any faster, but the people kept honking just the same.

  Free of the parking lot, I raced down Teledyne’s access road to Highway 30, just north of Linnton, Oregon. I could see Portland across the Willamette River and knew going to the southeast—turning right—meant heading into the city. With nukes inbound, that was the wrong direction to go.

  The word appeared to be out on the street—literally—as most of the traffic was headed out of town, and I burned rubber merging into traffic that was going much faster than the posted 35 miles per hour. Seven minutes and five miles still to go. I could still do this. The road had two lanes in each direction, along with a turning lane in the middle, and all of them seemed to be in use as outbound lanes this morning.

  I continued accelerating, weaving in and out of traffic, and put all of my defensive driving skills to good use. I’d been to the class a number of times—hell, I’d even taught it for three months—and I knew there wouldn’t be any problems making the minimum safe distance.

  Until the traffic stopped all of a sudden.

  Smoke rose ahead of us, as well as all around me as everyone stood on their brakes, trying to stop. I went onto the right shoulder to go around as cars slammed into each other, unable to stop in time; unfortunately, the car in front of me did, too, and I was unable to stop. With a choice between hitting the car, which was hard and metal, and running into some shrubbery, I chose the shrubbery. The handlebars got ripped from my hands on the soft ground, and the front wheel went sideways, catapulting me over it.

  I had shed most of my velocity before I lost control, so I didn’t hit that hard—unprotected bike crashes being a relative thing—and at least the ground was softer than the pavement. I struggled to my feet, looking for the guy who had run me off the road, but he hadn’t stopped—he was still working his way past the stopped traffic on the shoulder. I would have probably shot him, too, if I’d had a gun…but I was still without one, so I gave him a pass, as well as the finger. After all, it isn’t every day you get attacked by nuclear weapons, and that had everyone a bit out of sorts.

  I picked up my bike. It appeared okay, so I jumped on and started it. Five minutes left and still three miles to go. I was starting to get a little stressed, even beyond the whole “nuclear missiles inbound” thing.

  Traffic was now completely stopped in all six lanes—the four travel lanes and the two shoulders—but I needed to make progress. The shoulder on the right had a guard rail and a drop-off, so I scooted over to the left shoulder and made what speed I could in the dirt alongside it.

  Until some smartass decided he didn’t like me making progress when he couldn’t, and he opened his door to block me as I came alongside his car.

  This collision hurt a lot more, as it involved me running into the stopped hunk of metal. Unfortunately for the driver, the door also canted inward, so when I hit, I ended up almost in his lap as I rebounded.

  “The hell?” he asked, as if he hadn’t just caused the whole thing. He tried to push me off him and onto the shoulder, but I got ahold of the steering wheel with one hand and used it to stand up. Reaching in, I grabbed a handful of his hair and slammed his face into the steering wheel, once, twice, and then a third time just for fun when he stopped resisting me after the second blow. I didn’t have time for a good beat-down, so in a fit of spite, I reached into the car, removed the keys, and threw them over the road and down the embankment on the other side.

  “Asshole,” I snarled as I picked up my bike, again, and shut his car door so I could maneuver past it. One of his legs had fallen out of the car, and he woke with a howl as I smashed the door into his shin. Before he could delay me any further, I jumped onto the bike, started it up, and roared off down the shoulder.

  Three minutes and two miles to go. Through a gap in the trees on the right, I could see a set of railway tracks down the small embankment. I cut to the other side, drawing plenty of horns, and horsed the bike over the low guard rail. I jumped onto it again and drove down the shoulder of the train tracks. It wasn’t as fast as the open highway, but it was progress.

  I made it about half a mile, which got me past the accident on the road. It was massive, with at least 20 cars and two large semi-trailers involved. Only one lane was open, but with the panic, no one wanted to yield the right of way, and three cars were attempting to get past at the same time, with very little success. If nothing else, though, it put a bottleneck in the traffic, and there was almost no one on the road in front of me as I hit the pavement
again.

  One minute and one mile. I could do this…and then some.

  I don’t think I’d ever gone faster on a bike before, even when I was being pursued by the Dellik Unified people after causing the incident that would start the war between them and Obsidian. Good times. The Dellik folks were angry about losing the plant I’d just blown up, and they had been doing everything in their power to catch me. For my part, I was doing everything I could to ensure they didn’t; they were mean little bastards who loved torture. I was prepared to kill myself to avoid capture. Happily, it hadn’t come to that.

  I came to a weigh station as my internal timer went to zero, and I noticed the toll station had a large earthen embankment alongside it. I was slowing—I intended to use it for cover—when the ground bucked underneath me. I found myself flying through the air, then blackness took me.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Three

  I woke up to gravel pelting me and the sounds of a motorcycle receding. I don’t know how long I had been lying there recovering, but it had to have been at least an hour. Apparently, three motorcycle wrecks in the same day take a lot out of you. Even me. I stretched and found I was sore almost everywhere. Muscles, tendons, even bones—it didn’t matter—if it could be sore, it was.

  I pushed myself to my hands and knees to look around. As I had already guessed, my motorcycle was a spoil of war, heading northwest up Highway 30 without me. I was now on foot, unarmed, and on the wrong side of the country from where I needed to be. There was a lot of smoke to the southeast where Portland was…or where it used to be. Maybe three mushroom clouds worth. With all the missiles targeted on Portland, in general, and Teledyne HQ, in specific, I didn’t figure going back to my house was a worthwhile undertaking.