Baltic Gambit: A Novel of the Vampire Earth (30 page)

B
ALTIC
L
EAGUE
—A collection of Scandinavian and Baltic-shore countries composing the largest freehold in Europe. While the Kurians do control the major cities of the coasts, extending as far north as Trondheim, they rule with a very light hand and their position is precarious. Much of their vital aura comes through trade or headhunters who steal victims from farther south. While not militarily powerful in its own right, the Baltic League has what is perhaps the best information-gathering network in the world. It builds and distributes electronics that allow the freeholds to communicate, maintains a shortwave news network (often jammed locally by the New Universal Church or contra-programmed) and manufactures arms to be shipped to rebels elsewhere. While the Baltic League is probably strong enough to get rid of the Kurians entirely, it prefers the very weak hold of the present Kurians to whatever scorched-earth tactics might be used if it were to execute a coup to get rid of them entirely.

F
REEHOLD
—Any area in active resistance to the Kurian Order. Every man, woman, and child in a freehold tends to be familiar with the use of a variety of weapons to secure their homesteads, and highly motivated to keep out of the grasp of the Reapers.

K
ENTUCKY
A
LLIANCE
—Ranging over three states, the Kentucky Alliance at this time includes some of the mountainous
coal-mining areas of West Virginia, much of Kentucky, with influence spreading to North-Central Tennessee all the way to the mountains north of Nashville, and of course the small industrial city of Evansville in Southern Indiana on the Ohio near the operating area of Colonel Lambert’s Southern Command brigade assisting the new freehold. It is a mixture of legworm clans, who ranch their enormous mounts and smuggle goods from Missouri across the Appalachians to the Virginia tidewater, townsfolk, farmers, and miners, with a few bourbon-bottlers thrown in for flavor. It is unique among the freeholds in that it accepts Xeno species introduced by the Kurians as allies, making the first instance of Human/Grog cooperation in the history of the Resistance.

K
URIAN
Z
ONE
—Any area controlled by the Kurians and their Quislings. Some are as small as a county, while others span an area that covers several states. The level of organization and militarization varies wildly. In much of the West, the New Universal Church is a common denominator, organizing social services and political propaganda for the subject people.

U
NITED
F
REE
R
EPUBLICS (AND THEIR MILITARY ARM,
S
OUTHERN
C
OMMAND)
—While not the largest of the freeholds in North America (that would be Alaska and the Yukon) or the best organized (that would be the flinty Green Mountain Boys with their town-hall system and county-by-county headquarters), they were, up until the 2070s, the fastest-growing and most aggressive of the freeholds in North America. The Free Republics have mini-territories in Missouri, the southeastern tip of Kansas, Arkansas,
Eastern Oklahoma, and Texas save for a few spots on the coast, some of the Rio Grande valley, and a good deal of drier country bordering New Mexico. The political structure is very similar to that of the old United States, and it uses a slightly modified version of the Constitution to govern the “several states” that it includes. Self-sufficient in food and energy, and with a well-armed populace that is capable with even support weapons that are handy in most homes and garages, it lacks only advanced, high-tech manufacturing capability and air resources to control the Mississippi and the skies over the central portion of the old United States.