Tenerick heard Gyrun enter the defence room but he didn't look back. He was too busy concentrating on events on the mirror bridge, with his hands poised over the shield controls as screens round the walls showed the meeting between the Riders and Hirrilow from a variety of angles. He never expected treachery from within and that was why he was caught unawares when Gyrun suddenly put his arm round the engineers neck and pulled him back away from the shield actuators. The dagger which was thrust into his back just above the kidneys did not kill him immediately but a brutal twist and subsequent withdrawal left him slumped on the floor in a rapidly expanding pool of blood and the shock to his heart finally ended his mortal life soon after. Gyrun dropped the weapon and only now the deed was done did he feel a cold tremble of horror. It wasn't exactly murder in his eyes because every member of the Embassy to the Substrate was bonded to the Kalonia vurtiverse and when their body died, their spirit returned to the sanctum. Even now Tenerick would be starting on the long slow process of integration and reawakening within the vurtiverse that would eventually lead to the restoration of full consciousness within the modality from which he had been decanted. Yet if Gyrun had not precisely killed Tenerick he could hardly expect to greet him ever again on friendly terms in this world or the next and there was no disguising the serious consequences of this violence. There would be open civil war within the Sanctum of Kalonia now. The old party would be outraged and those factions who had secretly opposed Hirrilow would have to declare themselves. It was going to get ugly. Gyrun didn't have time to think about that now, he still had work to do and if his work succeeded the conflicts within Kalonia would not be a problem. The interpreter was more usually accustomed to deciding on fine points of law concerning the Vow Of Earth and he know little of the material details of the Kalonian defences but he had been given some help from agents in the Conclave. The so called "failure" in the defences when an alegoyle attack killed Cassia had in reality been a practice run for Gyrun and his associates, trying out some coding to see how the Kalonian defences were organised. Now he would make use of what they had learned to disable them completely. He worked swiftly, overriding manual controls that could only be operated from this location then activating others that sprang open and unlocked all the gateways and doors to the dome. Finally, there remained only one thing to do. A last routine flashed a bright signal light from the top of the dome. This was the signal light which the Riders had been told to expect.