Comstat was created to guide humanity into the future, but its vision of progress depends upon maintaining absolute control over every inhabited planet in the far-flung human diaspora. When nine mysterious starships approach Turner’s World and threaten its carefully maintained balance of power, the governing authority deploys its deadliest weapon: Vindici, a hyper-lethal augmented assassin engineered to be the ultimate killing machine. But Vindici’s fractured psyche may prove impossible to control. Will he preserve Comstat’s ordered civilization—or become the instrument of the hegemony's destruction?

You are death and damnation in human form. You are the lightning of Nemesis attracted by mortal rods. You assassinated Lincoln. You killed Trotsky—split his skull like a melon. You pulled the trigger at Sarajevo and smashed the seals of the Apocalypse. You are the poisoned blade that bled the Court of Denmark, the bullet in Garfield, the steel in Mercutio—and the fires of vengeance burn in your soul forever.

You are Vindici, the son of Death....

Roger Zelazny’s short story Nine Starships Waiting is a fast-paced, action-packed space opera blending military science fiction, political intrigue, planetary adventure, and futuristic suspense. Perfect for fans of Philip K. Dick, Alfred Bester, and Cordwainer Smith, as well as readers of transhumanism literature and speculative fiction that focuses on far-future civilizations, authoritarian dystopias, galactic empires, interstellar conflict, human augmentation, and genetic enhancement.

"A storyteller without peer. He created worlds as colorful and exotic and memorable as any our genre has ever seen."  –George R.R. Martin

". . . his performance was never anything other than dazzling."  –Robert Silverberg

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