Lascutter

A Lascutter is a powerful but extremely unwieldy type of Laser Weapon. A Lascutter is a very short-range high-powered cutting tool, used by troops on the battlefield to quickly slice through doors and bulkheads. Originally, the Lascutter was developed to serve as a simple industrial tool intended for cutting through armored bulkheads and dense ores for orbital construction and planetary mining operations. These weapons make use of disruption field-assisted short range laser arcs to cut through their target's dense molecular structure like a hot knife through butter. Commonly issued for boarding actions or building-clearance missions, at point-blank range a Lascutter is capable of slicing through plasteel and ceramite in seconds.

Lascutters were first adapted for use as weapons of warfare during the Great Crusade. Lascutters proved extremely valuable during sieges and void-based boarding operations, where they were able to breach enemy fortifications or voidships and if necessary become devastating close-quarters weapons.  They were a particularly favorite weapon of the Space Marine Legions' Breacher Siege Squads during the various campaigns of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. In the late 41st Millennium, the Lascutter, scaled down to mortal size, has also been employed as a weapon by certain squads of the Imperial Guard's Elysian Drop Troops, and likely by other Imperial Guard formations as well during boarding and siege actions.

Sources

• Imperial Armour - The Horus Heresy - Book One: Betrayal, pg. 235
• Imperial Armour Volume 8 - Raid on Kastorel-Novem, pp. 96-97