Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, you think. You decide its best if you keep an eye on Salo. Perhaps he’ll even meet with an accident…

During your journey you notice Alyssa has seemed a bit preoccupied, you go up to talk to her.

“What’s wrong?”
“Oh nothing Captain.”
“As I said before you don’t need to be so formal, you can call me by my name.” you say and gently grasp her hand and embrace her. The cool sensation makes you forget how damn hot this planet is.

While Alyssa is left speechless by you obvious continued attraction, Salo has been watching you and is very vocal on the matter.

“Sir! You can’t do this! You know Empire policy! And an alien on top of all of it? You’re showing a blatant disregard for rules and regulations! Don’t think I didn’t see you a few days ago exiting this blue whore’s tent! I can’t let this continue!”
“You’re out of line Salo!”
“No YOU’RE out of line! Maybe you outrank me, but I’m here to make sure this team doesn’t fall to alien influences! And between your lust for this alien bitch and this quest to find this mythical…”

Excellent! He’s getting riled up, now to press the issue.

“Salo, you’re not in charge of anything. I’m giving the orders here! And I’m telling you that you WILL fall in line right now!”

This sets Salo off, he goes for his pistol, but you anticipate this and grab your own and fire before he does. Your aim is dead on the mark, but Salo still manages to lunge at you, causing the both of you to fall into the water. Salo, in his death throws attempts to drown you by holding on to while you struggle for air. Your realize that your lungs filling with water isn’t a pleasant experience, as you blackout.

However your next experience is a lot better. Alyssa dives in to save you and you awaken on the raft with Alyssa breathing life into your body. A cold icy wave runs through it. You just wish you were in a better condition to appreciate it a lot more. As it is, you feel disorientated and a lot different. Your previous thoughts of leaving the Empire, finding the Xont ruins and all those other weird thoughts that suddenly filled your head are gone.

“Is he okay?” LaFleur shouts.
“Yes!” Alyssa shouts back to him.

You suddenly get up, and tell everyone to abandon this quest. You don’t want to get everyone killed trying to find something that might not exist anyway. Once again nobody has any objections. Everyone’s always in favor of living. Alyssa seems to show a sign of relief. You eventually dock and make camp on land, during this time you notice the coins you had are gone, you ask around if anyone has seen them, but nobody has. You go into Alyssa’s tent and ask her.

“No Captain, I haven’t maybe you lost them when you were underwater.”
“I guess, but I had them on me pretty securely, I still don’t see how I could’ve lost them.”
“Oh well, what’s done is done, don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah, but even though we might not have found a Xont building, those coins could’ve still been proof that its here, maybe we could go back and I could dive in to try to find…”

Alyssa looks into your eyes very seriously.

“Captain…don’t worry about it.” She says and kisses you.

What follows next makes you REALLY not worry about it.

When the Empire ships finally arrive, a report about Salo’s death is made out to be due to extreme heat fever. The Xont rumor isn’t mentioned and Paradise is written off as a low priority. You and your team are sent on your next mission. Your relationship with Alyssa is kept secret of course, but you always wonder if you really lost those coins or Alyssa got rid of them when she rescued you.

If she did, then she may have saved you in more ways than one.