Then as the man was writhing in pain, I put the barrel of my gun between his eyes, and called the police. Twenty minutes later, after giving them my position twice, they showed up. The ambulance showed up, five minutes after that. I was not arrested but was taken to the station to make a statement, and answer questions, and my mugger was taken to the hospital.

An hour later, my story was corroborated by some video footage showing that my assailant had damaged both the camera, and the light, in addition to his multiple counts of doing the same thing. I was free to go, and my revolver was returned.

A uniformed policeman drove me back to my car, I thanked him, and drove myself to my office.

My office was in the old town.

Old town was the site of the initial colony development. Most of the buildings were over a hundred years (that would be Earth years mind you) old, but burgeoning entrepreneurs like myself have worked to keep that section of town updated, or at least preserved. The building my office was in was a three story office built from the recycled parts of the first colony ship to make it to this star system. It wasn’t ramshackled! None of the buildings were ramshackled. The colony ship was set up to be repurposed into colonial buildings.

All of the old town buildings were nearly identical white sided, nineteen thousand square foot per floor, with a lot of windows looking out onto the world. The outside were sectioned off into smaller offices, with access from the street level, with the upper floor offices accessed through a central stairwell. These office buildings weren’t shoehorned into one small space either. In nearly every roundabout, there was a natural space filled native flora, and between every five buildings was a large garden to produce food, or a park filled with native flora, and fauna.

I reached my office, and as I stepped in I said “Hi Helen!” Hellen was my office's computer, a home, and office assistant A.I.

“The A,I responded with “Good afternoon boss! You have three messages.”

I flopped into a big comfortable chair, not one of those cheap assed office chairs found in cubicles on at least two planets in the Sol System, and another three planets in this system, who knows how many more worlds in the galaxy, but a comfortable chair and asked ‘Hellen’ “Well what are they?”

One was an advertisement for my car’s insurance, “delete” I ordered.

The next was in a language I couldn’t even understand, “delete” I ordered.

The last one started with “Warrant officer, don’t delete this message.”