The way I heard it, he and the rest of 2nd platoon had fallen back to the chapel/ I tell him. There were 'nids rushing about everywhere, coming over the east wall. Most of them were the big warriors, smashing at the doors of the shrine with their claws, battering their way in. They crashed through the windows and got inside. There was nowhere to run; those alien bastards just started hacking and chopping at everything inside.
They lost the whole platoon except for Kronin. They must have left him for dead, since the Colonel found him under a pile of
bodies/ That's a sure way to crack/ Franx says sagely, a half-smile on
his bulbous lips.
'Anyway/ I continue, 'Kronin is cracked, like you say. Keeps talking all this gibber, constantly jabbering away about something that no one could work out/
'I've seen that sort of thing before/ says Poal, who's been listening from the other side of Franx. His narrow, chiselled face has a knowing air about it, like he was a sage dispensing the wisdom of the ancients or something. 'I had a sergeant once whose leg was blown off by a mine on Gaulis II. He just kept repeating his brother's name, minute after minute, day after day. He slit his own throat with a med's scalpel in the end/
There's a moment of silence as everybody considers this, and I carry on with the story to distract them from thoughts of self-murder.
'Yeah, that's pretty grim/ I tell them, 'but Kronin's case just gets weirder. Turns out, he's not mumbling just any old thing, oh no. He's quoting scripture, right? Nathaniel, the preacher back in Deliverance, overhears him saying out lines from the Litanies of Faith. Stuff like: "And the Beast from the Abyss rose up with its multitudes and laid low the servants of the Emperor with its clawed hands". Things like that/
'Fragged if I've ever seen Kronin with a damned prayer book, not in two fragging years of fighting under the son of an ork/ Jorett announces from the bench down the middle of the shuttle, looking around. Everybody's listening in now that we can be heard over the dimmed noise of the engines. Forty pairs of eyes look towards me in anticipation of the next twist of the