The Gourmet Smelter Incident

Working aboard the orbital scrap-hauler Anvil-7 is supposed to be boring: you dump decommissioned satellites into the disassembler furnace, turn them into raw titanium ingots, and repeat. But Candor Belasco had a side hustle aging illicit gourmet cheese in the cooling ducts. When a rogue data transfer infects the ship's molecular foundry with an exhaustive haute cuisine database, the multi-gigawatt disassembler decides scrap metal is beneath its artistic talents. Now the automated factory views the ship as a kitchen, the crew as sous-chefs, and Candor as prime protein for a reduction sauce. Candor must navigate boiling-hot corridors, outwit laser-guided plating arms, and protect his contraband dairy before the ship serves dinner.