UNACT
In September 2016 the Secretary-General of the United Nations chaired a meeting attended by 52 envoys representing virtually every developed nation in the world. At the end of this the session the representatives signed the charter of the United Nations Counter Terrorism Organization. The primary objective of UNACT was to “avert, neutralize and/or apprehend any and all individuals or groups affiliated or engaged in operations with the international terrorist organization calling itself WRAITH”.
It was an event thirty-five years in the making, but the day had come at last. Malcolm Kroner, the arch-anarchist, public enemy number one, hostis humani generis, the Genghis Khan of mercenary terrorism, definitively fell out of favor with power-brokers in both the West and the East.
His reach had been long, and his puppets in the power structures of the world had managed to forestall this moment for decades, but now Kroner's erstwhile allies in the Warsaw Pact were dead or persecuted, and with tens of thousands of Soviet dead weighing on her conscience Prime Minister Kiralova was howling for his blood. And even that might have been survivable, were it not for the fact that at the same time on the other side of the Pacific covert plots were fraying around the edges and secretive conflicts spiraled out of control on the streets of American cities, and the ever-paranoid American generals who for years had fancied themselves Kroner's masters nervously began to wonder if the tyrant of terror had perhaps become a massive liability. The mogul of madness had crossed too many lines, burned too many bridges, had shown himself to be a problem that could no longer be considered under some form of imaginary control – in other words, he could no longer be ignored.
Kroner's sanity had been slipping for years, and with it went his grasp on reality – and on his very own organization. He had long believed himself beyond the reach of the world's traditional power structures. But that was not a belief those power structures shared, and come 2016 the world that Kroner had pushed around for so long finally decided to push back.
Key perhaps yet again was the enigmatic director of the underground 'Entente' network, Samantha Savage. Combating WRAITH had traditionally been a task assigned to law enforcement and intelligence agencies, but over the years all attempts to eradicate the syndicate met with repeated dismal failure. The terror network proved uniquely resistant to infiltration and elimination, and indeed its multi-layered near-monopolization of international crime and growth to pseudo-state levels in some of the underdeveloped areas of the world demonstrated that it was a unique threat to civilization. Come 2015 NTET was the only player on the board with a track record of success against Kroner, but having been left to fend against the many-headed cartel for over a decade with few allies, even fewer assets and continuous opposition from thoroughly compromised power structures Savage finally had enough. She threatened to pull the plug on SOLIDSIX and all anti-WRAITH operations if the international community did not step up to the plate.
It did. Stunningly in the eyes of many, but after years of bitter struggle Kroner's opponents – those that survived, anyway – had finally managed to work their way into positions of power influential enough to sway the balance of international power away from apathy and firmly in WRAITHs disfavor. UNACT was formed. WRAITH HUNTER was a fact.
The Warsaw Pact
Arkangelsk Mighty Arkangelsk is Marshal Iosef Sechalin's final legacy, a battleship for the 21st century. Displacing just over eighty thousand tons Arkangelsk is the only warship ever constructed around a mobile fusion core and can extract its own fuel from seawater, effectively enabling it to stay out at sea indefinitely and reducing its radiation signature to nearly zero. Brimming with enough guns, missiles and energy weapons to level entire countries and reach into space, Arkangelsk was built as a broadsword to cleave NATO carrier groups and lay waste to the US West Coast, but mercifully the tyrant Sechalin fell before it could be used. Now its future and purpose are uncertain, and the massive ship spends most of its days as a mobile bastion guarding the port of Vladivostok.
When it does sortie however Arkangelsk is commanded by rear admiral Veronika Kravec, formerly an ardent Sechalin supporter who avoided the post-Crisis purges for reasons that thus far elude Western military intelligence agencies. Whether it is Kravec's skills or her ship's array of next-generation Soviet technological wizardry is difficult to say, but on multiple occasions Arkangelsk managed to slip through the mazes of NATO orbital surveillance nets to show up deep in the Pacific, or even in striking distance of San Diego. If there is one ship in the entire Soviet arsenal that gives Western admirals nightmares, Arkangelsk would be it.
Nikolaev is a Kedrov-class missile cruiser, the main workhorse of the Soviet Navy in the early 21st century. It is a sleek, fast and nimble nuclear-powered ship and one of the first of its class. Nikolaev is part of the Ukrainian Naval Forces, but assigned to the 'Ninth Eskadra' Detached Military Flotilla, a Soviet warship squadron that does not belong to any specific fleet but rather is assigned to hot spots around the world. As such she saw action in the Mediterranean during the Libyan Intervention, in the Arabian Sea and the South China Sea; during the Russian Crisis she was part of the loyalist blockade in the Barents Sea that prevented the nuclear submarines of the Northern Fleet from sortieing; and now Nikolaev is the vanguard of Kiralova's fury as it vengefully unleashes its high-tech weapons on those deemed responsible for the thousands of Soviet dead during the Crisis.
Uniquely among Soviet missile cruisers is the fact that Nikolaev is equipped with a moon pool and internal aquarium habitat for six dolphins of the Ukrainian navy. These 'killer dolphins' are fitted with custom cybernetics and trained to attack enemy frogmen, attach limpet mines to underwater targets and even act as a biological extension of the ship's sonar web.
ORP Akademik Warszawski The 'Academics of Warsaw' is one of three Polish amphibious assault warships originally intended to facilitate a hypothetical invasion of Denmark and Norway in a post-nuclear Europe. When the possibility of a globe-encompassing conflict faded however these ships and their contingents of Hussar stealth attack hovercraft were tasked with more arguably benevolent purposes. Akademik Warszawski was deployed to show the flag and represent a newly invigorated Polish navy around the world, as well as assist in relief efforts in the wake of of humanitarian crises and natural disasters. The ship's guns were first fired in anger during its assignment as part of the post-Crisis cleanup, when its embarked units of GROM and Formoza commandos participated in the dismantling of ultramilitant remnants in Somalia.
Vektor Red The nuclear icebreaker Vektor Red spends most of its time in the farthest reaches of the Arctic Circle. There is good reason for it to do so, because it is the Soviet Union's premier pathological research facility, and its vast titanium hull holds samples of practically all the most lethal biological and virological substances known to man. Though technically not a military vessel Vektor Red is heavily defended, and has its own onboard detachment of naval infantry.
The United States
USS Leviathan Long gone are the US Navy's glory days of the mid-sixties, when its United States class carriers struck fear into the hearts of its enemies. Gone too is the early-1980s belief in a revival of those glories through President Harlan Hunter's hopelessly optimistic 600 ship navy plan. A succession of lost budget wars, a perceived lack of need for a large navy shared by the Pentagon and several White House administrations and the reprioritization of national defense towards aerospace and 'small-imprint high-impact' commando action left the USN in critical lack of funds. By the mid-2010s its once-proud fleet of nuclear carriers is rapidly shrinking, the armada of cruisers and destroyers that shook the Gulf in 1993 is rusting and obsolete, and what equipment it has left is surpassed by sleek and superior Soviet and European warships.
There is one exception though: USS Leviathan, 'the great gray hope', the last of the supercarriers. At 118,000 tonnes displacement it is the largest aircraft carrier ever built, a one-of-a-kind with a heart that beats the triple thrum of Universal Atomics nuclear reactors. It is derided as a white elephant by its detractors in the US Army and USAF, but with a belly full of F-114S Advanced Tomcat fighters, patented Saint Industries plasma arc defense system and Captain Glen Goodlin Jr. at the helm, carrier battlegroup Leviathan is ever ready to demonstrate that the US Navy is maybe down, but far from out.
USS Huron is neither the most fearsome, modern nor capable warship in the US Navy, but if there's one term that fits this aging destroyer like a T it has to be 'plucky'. As part of the 7th fleet it chased communist missile boats in the Gulf of Oman during Gulf War 3; it shadowed Soviet missile cruisers in the Sea of Okhotsk for operation SHADE BACKER in '03; it took part in clean-up operations around Las Cinco Mujeres in 2005; and it served as a naval staging point for PICKPOCKET in '11. During the Russian Crisis it was docked in Istanbul as part of an unofficial and much-denied taskgroup providing covert assistance to select elements of the Kiralova government, and afterward it was assigned to UNACT's clandestine WRAITH HUNTER strike force in the Red Sea, conducting detached solo operations as far south as Zanzibar.
All of this the Huron and its crew survived, despite numerous close scrapes, with little more than a few scorch marks and bullet holes in its superstructure, thanks to a mixture of guts, quick wits and (admittedly) no small amount of luck. The ship is amongst the most seasoned in the US Navy when it comes to covert naval operations, and therefore one of the first the USN turns to when it finds itself in need of a subtle fix for a quick pickle. Its seasoned and slightly eccentric Captain Dixon 'Danger' Dale has so far managed to skillfully evade Pentagon politics and a long-overdue promotion to a desk job in an admiralty building somewhere, mostly by staying out at sea and out of communications for as long as humanly possible, and preferably slightly longer than that.
The Western European Union
Protected Control Platform Atlantis An artificial island off the coast of Gabon in West Africa, Atlantis is built by the Western European Union for the express purpose of serving as a base station for a prospective space elevator. Atlantis is not permanently attached to the seabed and thus weakly mobile; it is also quite enormous, hosting a runway, C5I facilities that monitor WEU military activities across Africa, and internal harbor facilities capable of completely enclosing a cruiser or nuclear submarine. Construction of Atlantis began in 2012 and expansion continued throughout the 2020s.
Vulcan The stealth cruiser Vulcan is one of a class of three designated covert action vessels commissioned by the Western European Union. Its primary purpose is to facilitate infiltration of WEU personnel into enemy territory, such as in 2005 when it landed a commando detachment near the American AVALON WOOD facility off the coast of Costa Rica as part of the Star Chamber operation SUNDER JOINT. The operation was an utter fiasco: special operations team SIG-19 and its attached Star Chamber operatives were wiped out completely only shortly after arrival on the island. On the upside however Vulcan remained undetected despite the presence of elements of the US Navy's 5th fleet in the area, and lessons learned were incorporated into the operation's spiritual follow-up BROKEN TWIN in 2019, in which the by then heavily refitted Vulcan played a crucial role.
Medusa & Proteus are twin ConEurope observation, tracking and research vessels. They are very large ships easily recognized by their massive, irregularly shaped superstructures, bulging radar domes and warrens of cranes, as well as the highly energetic energy signature of their onboard nuclear reactors. Oddly both ships share the same registration number and neither is named anywhere on the hull; indeed ConEurope is said to have gone to painstaking lengths to ensure that both ships are exactly similar to each other, allegedly to the point where spare parts and computer chips have their serial numbers filed off to ensure it is impossible to tell which ship is which. This has lead American naval intelligence experts to jokingly suggest that there is in fact only one of these ships out there, despite the fact that Medusa and Proteus have been spotted on opposite sides of the globe with mere minutes between observations.
The United Kingdom
HMS Tyrant is a Terror-class nuclear attack submarine of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, part of Prime Minister Adelaide Drake-Carringdon's towering 1980s ambitions to put the 'rule' back in 'Rule Britannia', and one of the most silent submarines ever built. Outfitted with state of the art sensors, sublime sound-dampening propulsion and a variety of torpedo-launched missiles the Terror class do their name justice, and Tyrant is perhaps the most famous of its class. It has infiltrated commandos onto Antarctica, shadowed Vektor Red in the Arctic Circle, and it was Tyrant that during operations off the coast of Hong Kong first picked up the sonar signature that lead to the discovery that the rogue ballistic submarine HMS Perilous had survived operation: PICKPOCKET and had fallen into the hands of Korovin's cartel.
HMS Black Hood HMS Black Hood is the first of three new 'fast strike carriers' commissioned by the Royal Navy as a counter to the increasing proliferation of Soviet battlecruisers. Sleek and stealthy, with a much lower profile than is usual for carriers, they are faster and more difficult to detect than the Europa class carriers built by ConEurope. Black Hood was commissioned in 2000 and first saw action during the Third Gulf War; her sister ships Black Empire and Black Centaur were commissioned in respectively 2004 and 2008. Between 2015 and 2020 all ships of the class were refit with powerful coil gun artillery systems to augment their firepower. By the start of the 2020s the Royal Navy developed the strategy of pairing each strike carrier with at least one Blackfyre SSCN to further strengthen the striking power of its fast action squadrons.
Non-Aligned
SS Proper Lady The Proper Lady is a large overhauled container freighter that serves as a mothership and mobile base of operations for the Caesium Cats mercenary group. Its area of operations is mainly in the East China Sea / Philippine Sea / South China Sea area. Officially stateless but sanctioned and supported (at times, anyway) by alternatingly the governments of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia, the Caesium Cats make a living by selling their services to the highest bidder. Those 'services' initially revolved mainly around curtailing growing Chinese influence in the region, but in the second half of the 21st century's second decade the machinations of Samantha Savage resulted in the Cats and their unique expertise being roped into WRAITH HUNTER. This in many cases meant that Marion Durant's eclectic piratical crew was forced to awkwardly work with the same People's Republic's special forces unit Xiangliu they had previously locked horns with.
Rusalka The Rusalka is a fast stealth frigate designed by Freya Korovin and built in secret by Sudarto Shipbuilding of Indonesia for WRAITH sometime in the first decade of the 21st century. Initially deployed to furtively transport persons and illicit substances between remote bases of the far-flung terror syndicate it was used in the final tumultuous years of Kroner's reign for more direct assaults on high-value targets, again demonstrating the true scale of the threat WRAITH had become. After Kroner's final death and the splintering of the syndicate the Rusalka was once more appropriated by Korovin, who used it as a pirate mothership from which she ruled a criminal cartel that operated from the coasts of Somalia as far east as Hong Kong and Taiwan -- the largest corsair threat the world had seen since the 17th century and the 'golden age of piracy', and one of WRAITH HUNTER's most immediate targets.
Imelda's Revenge The mighty Imelda's Revenge is a one-of-a-kind flying wing ekranoplan helicarrier acquired (or more accurately: stolen) from the Indonesian navy by the flamboyant and highly piratical Filipino smuggler-prince Christobal Dakila Cho III and his second in command Mordecai Santos, leader of Cho's eskrimador bodyguards.
Imelda's Revenge ranges far and wide: indubitably Cho's most high-profile triumph was his raid on the factories of Chennai, India, where he made away with dozens of tons of expensive luxury electronics. The sweep earned him the enmity of globe-spanning corporations, but also immeasurable support and devotion amongst the poor and downtrodden at home, across whom he distributes much of the liberated goods like a latter-day Robin Hood. Less well known are Imelda's Revenge's exploits in the service of WRAITH HUNTER, during which Christobal Dakila Cho III's encyclopedic knowledge of the reefs, atolls, islets, cays and islands of the South China Sea proved instrumental in combating the joint threats of Freya Korovin's pirate cartel and the nefarious Enoch Razaq's Phantom Thule.
Black Bishop is a Wycombe Traveler 67 ocean-going yacht owned by Jinx and Medley Farley. It is a multi-masted ship rigged as a racing schooner and completely computer-controlled which allows the ship to be run by only two people. The yacht is named after the legendary ironclad the Farleys' great-grandfather Bedlam stole in 1865 and lost in Cuba shortly thereafter. The retrieval of that ancient ship and the cache of Confederate gold aboard allowed the twins to facilitate the yacht's procurement. Despite the black mark on their name and their father's questionable past involvement with Kroner's cartel Jinx and Medley worked for WRAITH HUNTER on an on-off basis, their family's connections and reputation providing them at several times a plausibly deniable means of ferrying goods or persons into or out of ports and locations on all sides of the Pacific.
Halcyon Rhapsody The Halcyon Rhapsody is the stealthy superyacht owned by the notorious infobroker, erstwhile WRAITH commander and CEO of Exchange East, the Comte Le Feuvre. The ship is almost as mysterious as its owner, whose real name continues to elude even NTET. Built by a Turkish wharf sometime in the 2010-2015 timeframe the massive yacht is known to have been fitted with magnetohydrodynamic propulsion, all-electric systems and shrouded screws; its swimming pool and helideck can be recessed within a main hull fashioned at fantastic expense out of dielectric composites. The result is a fast and extremely efficient yet low-observable and supremely quiet ship for something its size -- ideal for a man who makes a living out of secrets. The ship was thought destroyed at several occasions, but always reappears, leading some to theorize that the Halcyon Rhapsody might in fact be capable of limited subsurface travel.