Happy New Year, everyone! May your families enjoy peace and good health, and may everything turn out better than you hoped!
They had changed.
The xenos who had once done nothing but peer at the Imperium through optical scopes from beyond maximum range now seemed to have shed the outer skin of reason. There were no more precise bursts, no more mobile tactics of fighting while retreating. Viola's Fire Warriors were launching a suicidal charge at the Space Marines' lines with something approaching fanaticism.
The weapons in their hands were no longer those slender Pulse Rifles, which had possessed a certain elegant beauty. In their place were vicious weapons with shortened barrels and enlarged bores, looking for all the world like the crude but devastating shotguns carried by human Hive City gangs. More alarming still, gleaming bayonets had been fitted beneath those stubby muzzles, their edges flashing cold!
"What are they doing? Have these blue-skinned monkeys gone mad?" A young Lamenters recruit stared wide-eyed, his voice cracking with sheer shock. "They want to fight us with bayonets?"
That was also the first reaction of the vast majority of Imperial soldiers. Throughout this crusade, no T'au soldier had ever dared challenge the Emperor's angels in close combat.
Yet a second later, reality smashed that arrogant certainty in everyone's hearts like a heavy Power Fist.
When the Viola stormtroopers surged like a crimson tide into the kill zone a hundred meters in front of the positions, they pulled their triggers in unison.
Vrrrr-BOOM!!!
There was no anticipated barrage of solid projectiles. Those Pulse Shotguns, which looked as though they had been illegally modified, spewed clouds of plasma filled with wildly unstable energy, spreading outward in fans! This was the result of overclocking conventional pulse technology to its limits, trading range for