Blue Stripe - The Life and Times of a Weyland-Yutani Cryotech

This article is part of the The Blue Stripe Logs series.

So that's my life here in a little neat package for you. That what you wanted? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the logs. The logs, man. I got 'em. Boring as hell. Just warning you in advance. 674 days of logs. You might want to go for the recent ones what with the weird shit that's been going on lately. But, it's your deal, you cut it down to whatever you think is cool.

Ha ha ha! Cool, you got that? That's some shop jokes for your readers.

14.4.2179.AMBER

Nothing but excitement.Maintenance has been doing a refit of the USS Joseph Conrad Reference for the Colonial Marines and my part of the work has turned into a major pain in the ass. The ship had 48 Slimline Hyperdyne-88 deep freezes. Total pieces of junk that I wouldn't want to even pretend I can guarantee.

I talked to Captain Kurtz and convinced him to spend some of the refit money on a spanking new set of 48 SF-29s from the Company. Top-of-the-line hypersleep freezers. I love them. They have a redundant heat dampener and core body injectors slaved to an autdoc that will activate if the unit fails or takes damage. No more freezer burn and even shit-for-brains marines can figure out how they work.

Sounds great, but things didn't work out as planned. I passed the invoice over to Buddy and told him to requisition us the SF-29s from the Titan depot. Buddy claims it was a computer error. I think Buddy was just high again.

Whatever the reason, whoever was responsible, two weeks later I'm staring at a shipping container from Titan filled to the ceiling with DF-29s. For those of you not in the know, DF-29s are "love freezers" for couples. Same design as the SF-29, but they have two computers and are wide enough for two people to sleep next to each other. Oh, and they're pink with a big red heart decal laminated to the hood.

I don't have the time to issue a recall on the DF-29 lot and ship it back to Saturn, then wait for them to ship out the SF-29s I really wanted. I have double the number of DF-29s I need, but the power plant on Joseph Conrad Reference can't handle the electrical load of running 96 deep freezes.

My only option is to spray the damn things down with gray paint and hope the marines are pretty comfortable with close-quarters. Captain Kurtz ain't gonna be happy, but what is he gonna do? I've already got Castle and Ramón junking the Hyperdyne-88s. Maybe I can peel off the big heart decals. They might show through the paint otherwise.

Log Addendum: Couldn't get the decals off. Kurtz has a mean right hook.

9.6.2179.GREEN

Fruitloops here survived 57 years in an ECS-09, so even if she yells about space monsters she gets my respect.Unexpected visitor today. Apparently about a month ago a deep salvage team working the edge of the Core Systems picked up a lifeboat powerless and drifting. They smelled some easy money and grabbed the boat, only to find a single human occupant still alive in a ECS-09. 57 years, the woman was alive for 57 years in that thing.

It was a pleasure just to get to see her ECS-09. They don't build 'em like that anymore. Not even the Weyland-Yutani models. The ECS-09 is simple and reliable. No redundancy, no autodoc, no easy wakeup system. Just a big fatass freezer that could take a sabot round from a tank and keep on humming.

I went and visited the woman in the hospital. Ripley, I think. Cute gal in a stern, white girl afro sort of way. She was drugged and had some crystallization damage in her muscle tissue still being worked out by the electric therapy. Didn't say much and some dopey suit from Loss Prevention was hovering over her.

I asked her about her ship, Nostromo, and she started babbling about aliens eating the crew and acid blood. That's when the suit ushered me out of the room.

My guess is Nostromo was transiting too long and the crew went apeshit. It used to happen from time to time back then. Nowadays everyone just freezes for the transit and leaves navigating to the computer or they work in shifts.

Sad shit, but the suit said I could have her ECS-09, so I'm happy as a marine on Arcturus.