The prequel to the popular Old Guy/Cybertank Books. It is the distant future. Hundreds of billions toil in crowded windowless factories, while the oligarchs lord over all from their kilometer-high palaces. The only thing the oligarchs fear is a war with several alien species that they are losing. In desperation, they turn to a biologically engineered human, Giuseppe Vargas, to create new weapons that will let them win their wars with the aliens. Vargas is a protean genius, several times faster and stronger than any regular human, and borderline psychotic. He designs a radically new weapon system - the cybertank - a self-aware construct of astonishing power. Once the aliens are defeated, the oligarchs plan to eliminate Vargas. However, Vargas has his own plans, and the cybertanks are also developing an agenda...