Malevolent AH-50B

Mass: 50 tons
Movement Type: Hover
Power Plant: GH PowerMaxx 180 FuelCell Plus 165 Fuel Cell
Cruising Speed: 86.4 kph
Maximum Speed: 129.6 kph
Armor: StarSlab Standard
Armament:
     1 Autocannon/20
     1 Small Laser
Manufacturer: TriStar Intersellar
     Primary Factory: Sherwood
Communication System: TriStar Multilink II
Targeting & Tracking System: TriStar TrackMaster III W/ ArtiSpot
Introduction Year: 3020
Tech Rating/Availability: IS Level 2
Cost: 1.96 million C-bills

Overview
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.

Capabilities
The Malevolent is the family's speed argument: 129 kph flat out on a GH PowerMaxx fuel-cell plant, carrying the full 144-point StarSlab scheme of its siblings — the design brief's one non-negotiable being that the fast one would not also be the fragile one. The A-model mounts the family's standard turret, identical to the Malice A2 and Malcontent A1: Sunglow large laser, Holly SRM-6, coax machine gun, with the power amplifiers drawing on the fuel-cell plant in the family pattern. The B-model is the one opponents remember — the Defiance Killer Type T in the common turret assembly, machine gun deleted for a small laser and shell stowage, producing the fastest AC/20 carrier in the March inventory. A 129-kph Killer Type T does not skirmish; it arrives, and the 33rd's gunnery culture has built an entire tactical vocabulary around the moment of arrival. A C-model infantry carrier was studied and rejected: the purpose-built chassis runs deliberately narrow for its speed, and there was no honest interior room. Dedicated hover APCs were judged the better plan — a rare case of Common Heart declining a commonality in favor of a competence, and cited internally whenever someone proposes the family do one thing too many. The recovered-tech -51 series brought the Star League tier to the hover hull. The AH-51A trades the standard turret for an LB-X autocannon and a TAG designator — the fast tank now painting targets as well as taking them — and the AH-51E goes furthest of all: it gives its entire gun deck to an Arrow IV launcher to become the March's mobile guided-artillery battery, a shoot-and-scoot missile carrier that fires and has relocated a kilometer before the counterbattery solution resolves. The speed the family was built for turns out to be exactly what an artillery piece wants when the enemy has counterbattery radar. (See the AH-51E's own readout for the battery in full.)

Deployment
The Malevolent concentrates where the terrain votes for it. It is, above all, the tank of the 33rd Broken Wheel Cavalry — a regiment recruited from the Valvo Circuit and mounted to match, whose reaction-force doctrine in the Dominion rotation is written around the Malevolent's pace. Elsewhere it serves as the fast flank of mixed 'Mal' companies, the screen for the Malcontent's gun line, and the courier of the family's shared turret pool: squadron fitters swap assemblies between hulls as the mission demands, and a turret that fought on wheels last month may arrive at the next contact at 129 kilometers per hour. Militia orders favor the A; the Guards buy the B in numbers the sales office describes as gratifying.

History
The prototype Malevolents were honest improvisations: Malice turrets bolted to modified Maxim Heavy APC chassis, run across the Morven ranges to prove that the family's electronics and gunnery would tolerate an air cushion. They would; the borrowed Maxims, by every account, tolerated the turrets considerably less, and once the concept was proven MMS invested in the narrow purpose-built chassis the production type rides today. Service found the type its home almost immediately. Broken Wheel's plains took to the Malevolent the way Lackland took to boats, the Valvo Circuit's racers took to the B-model with an enthusiasm the safety board still discusses, and the planet's Rimrunner herds took to pacing Malevolent columns with such reliability that the 33rd's speed trials are formally benchmarked against them — the regimental standard, Rimrunner-plus, being the only performance requirement in the March written by an animal. When the 33rd stood up in 3050 with doctrine drawn from Clan-front after-action reports, the Malevolent was the vehicle the doctrine assumed; a generation later, regiment and machine are difficult to describe separately, which both parties appear to regard as the point.

Type: Malevolent
Technology Base: IS Level 2
Tonnage: 50

Equipment		Mass
Internal Structure		5
Engine	165 Fuel Cell	-
Cruising MP:	8
Flanking MP:	12
Heat Sinks:	0	-
Control Equipment:		2.5
Turret:		-
Armor Factor:	144	-

AH-50A - 1.78 million C-bills - 0 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Malevolent AH-50A.blk

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
Ammo SRM-6	Body	1	1
Machine Gun Ammo - Half	Body	1	0.5
Large Laser	Turret	2	5
SRM 6	Turret	2	3
Machine Gun	Turret	1	0.5

AH-50B - 1.96 million C-bills - 0 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Malevolent AH-50B.blk

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
Ammo AC/20	Body	1	1
Ammo AC/20	Body	1	1
Autocannon/20	Turret	10	14
Small Laser	Turret	1	0.5

AH-50C - 1.97 million C-bills - 0 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Malevolent AH-50C.blk

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
Machine Gun Ammo - Half	Body	1	0.5
Ammo LRM-15	Body	1	1
Ammo LRM-15	Body	1	1
Ammo SRM-6	Body	1	1
Machine Gun	Front	1	0.5
LRM 15	Turret	3	7
Medium Laser	Turret	1	1
Machine Gun	Turret	1	0.5
Machine Gun	Turret	1	0.5
Infantry Bay (2.0 tons)	Body	-	2.0

AH-50C - 1.93 million C-bills - 0 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Malevolent AH-50D.blk

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
Ammo AC/20	Body	1	1
Ammo AC/20	Body	1	1
Machine Gun Ammo - Half	Body	1	0.5
Autocannon/20	Turret	10	14
Machine Gun	Turret	1	0.5

AH-51A - 2.08 million C-bills - 0 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Malevolent AH-51A.blk

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
CASE	Body	1	0.5
Ammo SRM-6	Body	1	1
LB 10-X AC Ammo	Body	6	11
LB 10-X Cluster Ammo	Body	-	-
SRM 6	Turret	2	3
LBXAC10	Turret	7	12
TAG	Turret	1	1

AH-51E - 1.31 million C-bills - 0 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Malevolent AH-51E.blk

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
Arrow IV Ammo	Body	1	1
Arrow IV Ammo	Body	1	1
Arrow IV Ammo	Body	1	1
Arrow IV	Turret	15	15

AT-52A - 1.56 million C-bills - 0 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Malevolent AT-52A.blk

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
Gauss Ammo	Body	1	1
Gauss Ammo	Body	1	1
Gauss Ammo	Body	1	1
Machine Gun Ammo - Half	Body	1	0.5
CASE	Body	1	0.5
Machine Gun	Front	1	0.5
Hitch	Rear	0	0
Gauss Rifle	Turret	7	15