A Red Harmony agent named Dao arrives on Mars, disguised as a weather scientist. His mission: locate an alien artifact that the cartel hopes to use to access the archive of a long-dead alien race. Finding the artifact, Dao is obliterated by a quantum wave pulse emitted from the object. Worse, the pulse has changed the trajectory of a small comet that is being directed to impact Mars to provide much needed volatiles. Unless something is done, the comet will impact heavily populated areas of Mars in less than six months.
Johnny Winger and his quantum troopers are given a strange mission, in two parts. One detachment is sent to Mars to locate and render inoperative this artifact, before it erupts again. The second detachment, with Winger himself in command, journeys to the comet itself with the goal of using their ANAD systems to cleave the comet into parts and allow it to be diverted from uncontrolled impact.
But there is another artifact, unknown to Quantum Corps, that renders the ANAD swarms unreliable and incapable of competing the mission. Using their ship's weapons, the troopers try to break apart the comet into smaller fragments. But one fragment cannot be diverted and heads unerringly for impact directly into Mars' most populated regions. Only last-ditch desperate measures by the quantum troopers, in the face of forces they can scarcely imagine, have any hope to preventing unimaginable catastrophe.
Seventh episode in the Quantum Troopers Return serial.