They had picked up a hitchhiker, as the creature described himself. Mad man in a ship about to explode, was the term more commonly used among the crew. A lone explorer of far flung worlds. Or lunatic, in other words.
This, human, was mostly polite. But he had been complaining nonstop about the food since he got aboard. Something about no taste. Eating he could, often consuming four or more off our portions in one go, but apparently it wasn't up to his liking.
Finally some members of the crew got tired of this endless nagging. And the notion that they would have to hear it constantly for another month, before reaching their next station, became to unbearable a thought. With a lot of padding and ad hoc modifications, a brain scanner was fitted on his head.
Hocked up to the food duplicator, it would produced whatever food the human could think of and had eaten before. Data needed to get the taste just right. First time it blew the control chip of the food duplicator, as did it the other three times.
Either the human food was just ridiculously complicated, or the machine tried to work around something harmful. In the end, the human convinced the team to turn of the safety features. An act they would soon come to regret!
Curry, it was called. Biological weapon that filled the room with smells that would rip a lesser mind into pieces. It was only last minute caution of standing outside the room, in case the duplicator catched fire as it did the last time, that saved the them.
Even then, two of them temporarily lost their smell in the accident. After that the humans quarters was moved to were the modified food duplicator was, complete with an added airlock. Safe from the humans culinary habits.
Far from home, and far from any civilization, the next worst thing after the human happened, pirates! As was required, a token resistance was made before surrendering. Wounding one of the pirates and getting one of theirs wounded in return.
Cargo would be lost, but they had done what could be demanded of them. That's when everybody remembered that they hadn't seen the human during the entire thing. The last anyone had seen of him was several hours ago, running towards his quarter.
A strange smell started to sip trough the air. Was that, ammonia? Oh no, the food replicator! It could still only do food the human had eaten, but this was the human that had eaten CURRY!
Fervently he started waving all his arms around to warn everyone, and ran to the locker with the gas masks, meant to protect against chemical leaks from the engine.
Some of them got the message, most of the pirates, that hadn't had the pleasure of being subjected to the human before, just looked on dumbfounded. They started to sniff the air, far to late!
What followed was like a nightmare come true. All of their eyes started to turn red, desperately they tried holding their breath and a lucky few manage to get themselves knocked out for the effort, the others were not so lucky. Desperate for air they opened their mouth to breath and froze. Before violently starting to spew forth whatever they had eaten today, then yesterday, then whatever was left from last week and beyond!
Violently shaking, heaving up whatever was left of their stomach sack, blood filled eyes from broken vessels. The human walked into the room like an angel of pestilence, unharmed from all the chemical weapons. He stood like an indestructible bringer of death, with a plate in one hand and a glass filled with a white liquid in the other. His chosen tools for bringing forth this terror!
The pirates took one look at the creature and did the sensible thing, they ran as all hell! Leaving their knocked out friends far behind. We were frozen by fear, an automated reflex, we struggled to defeat it and run with them, away from the human. But when we once again had control over our bodies, they were long gone. Every one turned to meat our 'savior'.
"Hello there guys! Sorry about your friends. I got a dare from one of the guards for the worst food I could imagine, and wondered if you would like a taste?" They looked on in horror as the content of the plate was revealed to them.
"This is fermented shark in urine, Hákarl." Pointing at the plate.
"Fermented horse milk, Kumis." Pointing at the glass of white fluid.
"And one ghost pepper!" A tiny red plant on the edge of the plate.
He looked at their gas masks wearing faces. "Not up for it, eh? Haha, I knew I would win that bet!" The perpetrator would get caught, and spaced! Or perhaps, being forced to spend some time in the human quarters, yes. That was a more, fitting punishment!
Don't worry, Hákarl doesn't contain urine. It just taste and smell as if it does.
"It's like chewing a urine-infested mattress" - Ainsley Harriott