Another snapshot of one of the characters who finds himself on Hellhole, “the place to go when there’s nowhere else to go.”  In the overall epic, all of these characters must learn to rely on one another, and face the hazards of this terrible planet as well as the politics of the corrupt galactic government they left behind.

Hellhole will be in US bookstores Tuesday, March 15.

Vincent Jenet

Back on his home planet of Orsini, Vincent had lived with his retired and sickly father Drew, tending the man’s worsening medical condition.  He worked in a repair shop for large machinery, eventually becoming manager; he understood cranes and lifters, construction loaders, upboxes and downboxes.  He was used to crawling right inside the engines and power pods in order to fix them.  A good employee, very reliable, never causing any trouble.

But when his father’s condition changed from disability to terminal illness, Vincent found himself sliding into a bottomless pit of treatments, medical experts and contradictory medical specialists offering expensive and unproven options.  Cheaper regimens were either ineffective or had hundreds of patients ahead of his father.

Vincent drained all the money from his savings.  He refused to accept that his father was dying, and no treatments were going to cure him.  Vincent worked overtime at the shop, trying to earn more money as a solution.  While expressing sympathies, his boss, Mr. Engermann, insisted that he could only afford to pay him a token bonus.

Vincent, however, knew why the man couldn’t pay more:  Engermann collected expensive glass-and-aerogel sculptures.  The levitating sculptures were exquisite and innovative, but their value rested in the fact that their creator was Enva Tazaar, daughter of the planetary lord.  The woman fancied herself an artist and had all the wealth and leisure time to prove it.  Enva sold her sculptures as fast as she could create them, and Vincent’s boss had six in his collection.  Mr. Engermann bought them not because he was an art lover, but to curry favor with Lord Tazaar.

But even when Vincent put in countless extra hours and turned over dozens of new work tickets, Engermann said he couldn’t afford to pay any more.  The situation frustrated Vincent; this wasn’t how his life was supposed to be.

Upon learning of a promising experimental treatment for his father’s condition, Vincent became convinced it was the cure he had been searching for.  Drew Jenet didn’t have much time, and Vincent had to find a way to get the money for the treatment.  Though Drew begged his son to accept the inevitable, Vincent doggedly refused to surrender.

The more he thought about it, the more incensed he became that Mr. Engermann wasted so much money on Tazaar sculptures, which he displayed like treasures in the headquarters office.  Any one of those objects, if sold quietly on the black market, could pay for the experimental treatment.  It seemed immoral that his boss could waste so much wealth on a frivolous thing, when another man’s life could be saved.

Rationalizing his actions, Vincent broke into the repair shop office at night and stole one of the valuable sculptures — only one — and left the remaining five untouched (a fact that baffled investigators of the crime).  But he didn’t need more:  Selling a single sculpture yielded enough money to secure the treatment, and Vincent did so without delay or regrets.  Once he solved his father’s problem, he could catch his breath, slowly but surely put away a nest egg, and find a way to pay Mr. Engermann back.

Though Vincent was careful, he hadn’t counted on Enva Tazaar’s obsessive interest in each of her sculptures.  When she heard that a new buyer had made a purchase, she hired security experts to track the payment and turned the information over to authorities, who pinpointed Vincent Jenet and arrested him.

But he had already spent the money on the risky but vital treatment.  Though guilty, Vincent knew he had made the right choice.  He did not deny the charges:  He had done what he had to do.

A week later, Drew Jenet died of complications from the procedure.

Ruined, distraught, and now on trial for theft, Vincent had nothing left to lose when the convicting magistrate offered him a choice: do prison time or relinquish all ties to his home and volunteer for relocation to the Deep Zone.  Many of the untamed worlds were perfectly habitable, with pleasant climates, abundant resources, and plentiful opportunities.  Though he hated uncertainty, he had to start a new life.  He signed the forms with no regrets.

However, Enva Tazaar held a grudge against him for stealing one of her precious sculptures.  Despite the fact that Vincent was a nonviolent prisoner, no prior record, and a sympathetic motive for his crime, the noblewoman pulled strings to make sure he was assigned to the worst possible planet in the Deep Zone. . . .