Defect Holonomy in the Minimal and Embedded Reduced Transport Sector

Under the hypotheses of T36, the unique Gray-class closure defect is shown to lift to a genuine two-level skew-Hermitian rotation generator on the defect support Hd = span|8⟩, |24⟩. Five results are established. On the minimal defect sector, in the ordered basis (|8⟩, |24⟩): Ed = iσᵧ, Ed² = −I, Ed⁴ = I. The holonomy Ud (θ) = e^θEd = I·cos θ + Ed·sin θ is unitary and realizes an SO (2) -rotation on the defect plane. Under the canonical quarter-turn normalization τ = 1 from T36: U_τ = e^ (π/2) Ed = Ed. The holonomy flips the local grading: Ed, Z = 0 and U_τ·Z·U_τ⁻¹ = −Z. When embedded into the larger reduced transport system Hᵣed = Hd ⊕ Hᵣ, the defect survives as a dressed iσᵧ-type generator with effective defect projection coefficient: λₑff (θ) = 1 + ⟨Ed, A⟩ − ⟨Ed, B (θI − D) ⁻¹C⟩ The defect holonomy persists under embedding whenever λₑff (θ) ≠ 0. Whether Q5-induced residual coupling forbids exact cancellation in all cases is not proved here; that is, the open non-cancellation question and the natural next theorem target. Status: Minimal two-state matrix form, rotation-generator algebra, unitary holonomy formula, quarter-turn normalization, grading inversion, embedded block form, and effective coefficient formula are all solid by direct matrix computation. Embedded persistence conditional on λₑff (θ) ≠ 0, non-cancellation under actual Q5-induced residual coupling not yet proved from first principles. All results inherit T36 hypotheses and T16/T17/T20 conditionality. Dependencies: T1, T2, T7, T14, T15, T16, T17, T18, T19, T20, T29, T30, T34, T35, T36.