How can a retired savior be considered retired if his price drops to 40,000?

Chapter 320 Who will examine whom?

There are many worlds in the vast territory of the Empire, and Selina Maran has personally overlooked many of them in various ways. She dare not say that she has seen most of the planets within the country, but she can certainly say that in her implant-enhanced memory, no other airport in the Empire can bring back her memories of Holy Terra like this one on Baal Prime.

- Don't get me wrong, this is not to say that the scene that Malan can see from the bridge observation window is similar to the sky above Holy Terra. This so-called "touching the scene and evoking emotions" is more of a subjective feeling of homesickness due to the current situation, because Malan has indeed not returned to her birthplace Terra for a long, long time. In fact, because of the nature of her work and the chaotic time flow in the current galaxy, she herself can't tell exactly how long this "long, long time" is.

For example, more than a hundred years have passed since the events in the Holy Land of the Empire began, ever since the Great Rift opened and the resurrected Thirteenth Primarch Robouti Guilliman launched the Indomitus Crusade. But to Baal and the vast majority of worlds in the dark side of the Empire, the opening of the Great Rift was still a "new thing" just a few decades ago.

Back to the present: The fact is that the time spent waiting for approval to enter the port over Baal did remind Maran of the patient waiting she had to go through every time she returned to Holy Terra.

As a death world, Baal Star-Star was not qualified to carry so many people, even though it was once the home planet of a loyal primarch and a religious holy place where a founding group of Astartes sat for 10,000 years. But now, with the Great Rift dividing the Empire in two, as the dark side hub appointed by the Imperial Regent Robert Guilliman, Baal's further rise in political, religious and military status has naturally produced a population siphoning effect on the surrounding areas. In addition, Lord Commander Dante also ordered the Blood Angels to search for and eliminate the threat of the Hive in the surrounding star regions, and to temporarily extradite the war refugees who had to be relocated from the local area to Baal for unified redistribution. All these various reasons together eventually led to the unprecedented prosperity of the Baal Main Star Port in tens of thousands of years.

It also caused unprecedented congestion problems in thousands of years.

When processing the port entry formalities for his ship, the Fortitude and Power, Marlan learned from his clerical specialist that the Blood Angels and the local internal affairs department of Barr had obviously made efforts to solve this problem, but with little success. At least when queuing over Holy Terra, although the waiting time was still long, the experience accumulated over ten thousand years as the administrative center of the empire had enabled the Terra Customs to handle any emergency in an orderly manner, and to accurately calculate the scheduled inspection time of each ship to the Terra time. But in Barr, their internal affairs staff had obviously not mastered this technology to perfection.

The Fortitude and Power was a black ship of the Inquisition under the command of the Lord Inquisitor of the Holy Hammer Order, so even in non-wartime, it had the privilege of being exempted from most inspections and entering the fast lane. Even so, Marlan's ship still waited for several Terra days in the temporary berthing area before it received the tugboat guiding the berth and the official permission to enter the port, and at the same time obtained the channel breakdown form of the sound array network on the main star of Baal (which was almost always under wartime control).

"Next, to be on the safe side, I would like to contact Judge Sibylla Hastings first." Marlan on the bridge asked the people around him in a consulting manner, "Captain Stern, I heard that you once worked with my colleague for a short time. What do you think of him?"

"In my memory, Sibylla Hastings was an astute and cautious psyker of the School of Prophecy." Avian Stern, a Grey Knight captain-brother, dressed in heavy grey Terminator battle armor and surrounded by the glimmer of psionic energy from the runes engraved on the armor, said fluently:
"We once worked together on a cult cleansing operation, and the Lord of Change was clearly behind the chaos. If you ask me for my opinion, I would give him a very high score: Inquisitor Hastings's attainments in reading the Emperor's Tarot are impressive, and he also has the appropriate on-the-spot judgment and command capabilities to see through the schemes of the Chaos enemy.

"I must admit that if my team had not received the help of the prophecy and wisdom of Inquisitor Hastings, the whole thing would certainly not have ended in such a relatively peaceful way. His loyalty to the Empire and hatred for Chaos are impeccable. But I must also remind you, Inquisitor Lord Maran, even so, he is still a mortal, and the story I narrated has been going on for at least forty years. No one can guarantee whether anything has happened in the past forty years."

Malan sighed slightly. She knew what the other party really wanted to express behind these sentences. Although she did not have the attitude of "preparing for the worst" from the beginning, she did not have any sufficient reasons to refute the other party.

Perhaps in the eyes of all Astartes, mortals are more fragile than them both physically and mentally, and are more easily corrupted when exposed to Chaos. But if we were to say which chapter among all Astartes has the heaviest stereotype on this issue, if the Grey Knights consider themselves second, I'm afraid no chapter would dare to claim first place.

What is even more disturbing is that this "stereotype" of the Grey Knights is an objective fact built up from a large number of actual cases.

This objective fact in the eyes of the Grey Knights has led to a series of complex problems, some of which have been initially resolved today, while others have not - this is not the focus of the current issue. The point is that Captain Stern has implicitly raised the possibility that "after more than forty years, Inquisitor Hastings may have gone astray because of his over-persistent pursuit of the Chaos enemy", and although Maran does not want this conjecture to be confirmed, he has to admit that from an objective point of view, this is not completely impossible.

"Look at it from a positive perspective," Inquisitor Malan advised, "at least after this 'accident' happened, he was the first to contact the Inquisition."

"I understand your desire to handle this incident smoothly. I also understand the various concerns you may have as an official representative of the Inquisition after reading the relevant briefing." The captain monk said in a calm and cold tone, "And this is why I led the Shaper brothers to appear on this ship."

As a captain monk of the Third Brotherhood (Company) of the Grey Knights, the Shaper Guardians, Stern currently leads a small half company of two Terminator combat teams stationed on the Fortitude Power. Officially, they are here as representatives of a third-party organization, acting as witnesses to mediate the conflict between a Lord Inquisitor of the Tribunal and the Chaldean Bureau under the Astronomican. But this number of people is obviously too much for a political mission - needless to say, there are many explosive problems behind this personnel arrangement.

Although the Torch Court has long lived in a small piece of land in Holy Terra, for some reason a subordinate organization suddenly emerged in Bal, and the leader of this subordinate organization has such a high seal authority. This sounds suspicious to everyone - but what if it is true? No one can guarantee whether there will be any catastrophic consequences if this matter is not handled properly: even if the imperial regent continues to use his superhuman brain to handle all matters, the fragile political structure of the current empire, which has lasted for 10,000 years, is still somewhat unable to withstand such internal friction. "Thank you for your understanding." Maran's tone was calm, but still with a bit of undisguised worry, "And, I must ask you, no matter when and where you find any clues, please discuss it with me before taking action, okay? This is really a very sensitive issue politically."

The Grey Knights were obviously not interested in politics, but they still knew that the overall situation was important. After getting the approval of Captain Stern, Maran ordered her communicator to contact the Shadow Hammer on the sound array channel. The good news was that after just over ten minutes, they received a definite response. The person in charge of the work on the Inquisition's black ship was willing to communicate with them immediately; the bad news was that the identity of this "person in charge" was somewhat beyond Maran and others' expectations:
After the image transmission was successfully connected, what was displayed on the full-system projection screen of the bridge of the Fortitude and Power was a royal guard wearing a golden helmet and golden armor, holding a long-handled axe, and wearing a robe of honor.

"Good day, everyone from the Inquisition and the Grey Knights. You can call me Vasilian the Watcher of the Custodians. I am here on behalf of the will of the throne." The Custodian was clearly not in a good mood, and even the most basic greetings were omitted during the communication. "As the captain of the guard of Fujimaru Ritsuka, who has the titles of 'Emperor's Chosen, Envoy of the Throne, Son of Hope, Star of the Long Night, Drinker of Sin, Grand Mentor, Imperial Saint' and dozens of other honorary titles, I have taken over the investigation and aftermath of this incident a Terra standard month ago."

Although Vasilyan, who had been appeased by Fujimaru Ritsuka over the past month, had regained his composure, he still could not guarantee that he would not vent his anger on others. He was actually secretly complaining that the Inquisition was too slow, but unfortunately, the person he was talking to did not realize this - whether it was Marlan as a mortal or Stern as a Grey Knight, they were all so shocked by the same thing at that moment that they had no time to worry about the implications of the words:
Where did this guard who claimed to represent the "will of the throne" come from? I didn't hear in the briefing that the throne court also intervened in this matter?

Ultimately, this problem can be attributed to the fact that information from the dark side of the Empire is even less smooth than before the Great Rift opened.

When Hastings sent the first briefing to the Inquisition on this matter, he naturally thought that Wilchak was an Inquisitor, and the Inquisitor's affairs should be handled by the Inquisition because of his own fixed mindset. So, he followed his usual narrative method of "only saying the key points" and simply regarded the Imperial Guards as temporary helpers when there was a shortage of manpower in the briefing, unconsciously writing in a spring and autumn style. After a few days, as a mere Inquisitor, Hastings found that he had been turned over by the Supreme Instructor in this matter. After struggling in vain, he remembered to send out a revised version of the briefing again - but when this revised version finally arrived at its destination, Maran, who temporarily accepted the position of special prosecutor of the Inquisition, had already sailed with the Fortitude Power in the subspace storm of the dark side of the Empire, and therefore completely missed the relevant star language.

The problem caused by the poor transmission of intelligence directly resulted in a few seconds of silence, which was broken by the sound of clearing the throat at the other end of the communication: Inquisitor Lord Selina Maran was trying to contact Sibyl Hastings as she intended, and she was indeed present at the scene. However, when a golden Guards Watcher occupied the center of the transmission screen, an ordinary Inquisitor who looked very plain and relatively close to the edge of the screen was not easy to be noticed.

"Madam Selina Maran, Lord Inquisitor, and Lord Grey Knight Captain Brother Avian Stern, welcome everyone." This welcome speech seemed awkward in the current situation, but at least, Hastings successfully broke the most awkward silence between the two sides. "You should have known the current situation in the briefing, but in order to avoid ambiguity due to loss of information during the transmission process, please allow me to briefly summarize the whole process of the whole thing here..."

In theory, Hastings provided a good step in time, enough for everyone present to follow this briefing and move away from the current awkward position. In fact, the Guards Warden Vasilyan obviously had a very different understanding of the meaning of the "steps" here:

"We can talk about this later." He mercilessly interrupted Hastings's long speech, and the latter rolled his eyes while reluctantly shutting up. The Imperial Guards seemed to be unaware of the Inquisitor's clear dissatisfaction and ignored him, continuing to speak to Maran and Stern: "According to the general practice of the Empire in dealing with similar incidents, you will definitely want to listen to the testimony of Ritsuka Fujimaru, one of the parties involved, the Imperial Saint who stood directly at the forefront of the accident, and the current object of protection for me and my Imperial Guards team. But unfortunately, this Excellency is very busy and has a tight schedule. Although she also proposed to talk to the person in charge sent by the Inquisition in person after hearing that you were about to arrive, her schedule has indeed been filled with major and minor matters during this period of time."

The content of this passage was not difficult to understand, but Malan still didn't know how to continue. If you say that this imperial guard had no intention of solving the problem, he did bring up some useful things for their investigation; but if you say that this imperial guard was going to actively solve the problem, he seemed to have a slightly sarcastic attitude...

The Grey Knight Captain monk on the side had no expression, but based on what Marlan had known about him during this period, he must have been a little angry. In order to avoid further escalation of the conflict, the Lord Inquisitor had to speak before Stern could successfully speak:
"Forgive me, but you must also know that I am an inquisitor specially sent here by the Inquisition to investigate the case of Michaelia Wilczak's illegal summoning of demons. I must give my colleagues and superiors a credible explanation on this matter." She lowered her posture as much as possible, and stated this fact with a smile in the softest and least aggressive tone - a direct conflict with a guard who seemed to be in a bad mood would not be good even for a lord inquisitor. Besides, Malan was assigned this task and came all the way from the Misty Star Region because of her relatively soft and smooth personality and not easy to conflict with other institutions in the empire.

"Considering the identity of one of the parties involved in this matter, we can certainly conduct the investigation in a way that is as brief as possible and does not disrupt the work and life of this lady, but with all due respect, the corresponding compliance procedures are still indispensable. In any case, we have to disturb this lady."

Perhaps it was because it was not advisable to hit someone who smiled at you, or because Malan's request was not excessive, or perhaps it was because of some other reason. In short, Vasilyan did not dwell too much on this issue. Although the rhythm of the conversation had been completely disrupted by the sudden intervention of the imperial guards, Malan still decided to continue asking questions on this topic, and she would get as much information as possible:
"So, please, when can we speak to this lady?" she asked. "At a time that is more convenient for her, of course."

The answer she got was somewhat unexpected:

"Immediately." Vasily's tone was a little gloomy. "Your Excellency has squeezed out time from her schedule for this purpose today. She will be joining this line immediately after a meeting with the Ministry of the Interior in five minutes."

For some reason, Hastings at the corner of the screen sighed with a rather tired attitude after he finished speaking.

(End of this chapter)