"Steve Perry - Matador 6 - The Albino Knife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

The President turned to his wife. "I don't know."

It was quiet in the hallway, and it took Carlos a few seconds to figure out why that was wrong.

The air blowers were off.

Impossible.Every enclosed space on the ship had its own backup air supply, compressed tanks that
were supposed to go online instantly if the main pipes were shut off for any reason. Where were they?

Jarl had already noticed it. The matador moved with easy grace to the manual hatch crank. The safety
door could be opened with that, in the unlikely event of a total power failure. Not that Carlos thought
there was any real danger. There was probably enough residual air in the corridor for the three of them to
breathe comfortably for several hours, even without the backup tanks; somebody would come for them
long before it ran out. Meanwhile, he could hurry things along by calling them.

"Intercom," Carlos said.

The ship's integrated com was silent. Very strange, that the com should go out, too—

"Damn!"

Carlos looked at his bodyguard. Jarl, like most of the matadors he had known, was usually calm and
unflappable. "What is it?"

"The crank cover is jammed shut."

Carlos felt a coil of coldness grip his belly. "Somebody will miss us."

Jarl shook his head."Maybe not. The comlink is down. Now I can't get through to the computer on my
set, either."

The matador walked to the rear door and tried the manual control cover. It wouldn't open.

Carlos moved closer to his bodyguard and dropped his voice so that Beel couldn't hear. "What else?"

"My personal channel to Shum and Lil is being flossed."

That was bad, Carlos knew. The matadors had their own comlink, independent of the ship's computer, a
short-range radio connection run off the dentcom's bioelectric batteries. If that was blocked, somebody
was doing it on purpose.

They were trapped like bugs in amber, communications cut off.
Carlos stated the obvious. "This isn't an accident."

"No, sir.I had Lil online for a few seconds and she said the airdoors are down in the crew's quarters and
in engineering. Lifesupport is turned off there, too. Only the comp can shut that down, and then
supposedly only during a coded maintenance interlock with the chief engineer and a repair dock chief
working together.Can't be done in Deep with people onboard. And the comp is supposedly
rascal-proof, too."