Crew: ____________________

The Malevolent completes the 'Mal' family: the hover leg of a three-hull system that gives March armor commanders wheels, tracks, or air cushion under the same turret, the same StarSlab plate, the same Multilink/TrackMaster electronics, and the same hydrogen bowser. Where the Malice was built to a requirement and the Malcontent was built to a complaint, the Malevolent was built to a map — the March owns some of the finest hover country in the Federated Suns, and a family of fifty-tonners that couldn't cross the Tyre flats at speed was leaving the best terrain in the region to the enemy's imagination. As for the name: by the third vehicle, the escalating 'Mal' convention had become an institution, and the MMS marketing department — asked whether the naming scheme wasn't becoming somewhat sinister — is recorded as replying that the vehicles were named honestly and the complaint department was a tracked tank.