Very Beautiful, Very Much Admired
Travis gasped as the needle retracted from his arm. Now fully recharged, his last mutoid crewman efficiently bandaged his wrist. They'd run out of blood serum ages ago, and while he'd prefer to feed them other people's, it just wasn't always practical.
Travis felt light-headed, almost to the point of euphoria. He whistled a song about love and adventure in the vastness of space that he only seemed to remember when he was drunk, and stood up much too fast. He almost fell over, but caught himself just in time, clinging to his command desk for dear life.
"Keera!" he called out.
"The mutoid you refer to as Keera is not aboard ship," his mutoid responded.
Of course. How could he have forgotten? They had transferred her back to earth when he had tried to have her court marshalled. Even now he still burned with embarrassment when he remembered that technician, smugly informing him that mutoids could not be court marshalled. If she had failed to follow orders, he'd explained slowly and in plain language, as if he were a child, she had either malfunctioned or had been ordered to do something impossible. And their diagnostics had not detected any malfunction.
The mutoid that had never been Keera, (but had, if fact, been a young man with rather a lot of freckles) stared at him blankly, awaiting his next order.
"Help me to my quarters," Travis demanded.
"Yes, Space Commander," he replied, wrapping a cold arm around Travis's shoulders. He wasn't a Space Commander any longer, but the mutoid didn't know that.
Back in his quarters the mutoid helped him out of his plastic flexi-armour, a process which was, in his weakened state, making him positively dizzy. He grabbed a hold of the mutoid for support, but having caught him off guard served only to pull him down on top of him as they both tumbled onto the bed. The mutoid moved to stand, but Travis gripped him firmly with his prosthetic hand.
"No," Travis commanded. "Stay where you are."
"Yes, Space Commander," the mutoid answered, as Travis's lips strained up to meet his own.
"Keera…" Travis murmured, lost in a dream, before he was slapped awake by his crimo companion.
"She wasn't your girlfriend, she was a mutoid. I don't care if you fucked her, though even I think that's kind of sick, but if you were in love with her, you're an idiot." Mollok shouted into his ear.
"You don't understand," he muttered, still half asleep. "You're too young, you don't remember."
"Idiot!" Mollok repeated, kicking him in the shin before rolling over and going back to sleep.
In his dormitory at cadet school, Travis flipped through the hollo-mag again and again. Keera's dress glittered with all the stars in the sky, and when she moved she sent them all whirling in every direction. Sparkling, spinning galaxies swirled around her beautiful face as she sang a song of love and adventure in the vastness of space. Travis sang along, under his breath; he knew every word by heart.