[Nanotroopers 05] • Table Top Mountain

Johnny Winger recovers at Table Top. But Sheila Reaves is acting strange. Turns out she’s been replicated and is an ‘angel’; the real one was kidnapped in Singapore. Not only that, but the nanotroopers find evidence that other Table Top personnel, even inanimate objects aren’t what they seem. Winger now has an ANAD embed. But they have to find Reaves…she knows a lot about Quantum Corps operations and tactics. It turns out that the kidnapping was bait, a sting operation by Quantum Corps to attract Red Hammer into making a move. The real Reaves is assigned as an undercover counter-intel agent at UNIFORCE Headquarters in Paris…and the Security Affairs Commissioner (UNSAC) himself is suspected of collaborating with the cartel. Surveillance reveals UNSAC is overseeing some kind of strange archeological dig in Kenya, a place called Engebbe. Winger and Reaves are assigned to follow and investigate. At Engebbe, they find the cartel’s operatives are intensely interested in excavating a strange sphere from the same site that ANAD’s processor originally came from. The nanotroopers join the dig posing as interns on summer study. They locate the sphere inside a cave, but the excavation walls collapse, trapping them inside the cave. Worse, ANAD itself is missing, after coming into contact with the sphere. They have no choice to but to try and locate ANAD. Winger touches the sphere himself and goes on a dizzying ride through multiple quantum states, to places and times far distant from Earth. It seems as if Red Hammer may be in contact with an extraterrestrial race, using their archives to help their criminal enterprises. Somehow, Winger and Reaves have to get out of the cave and away from the sphere and warn the Corps of what has happened. Fifth episode in the Quantum Troopers serial.