Hathor AT-40A

Mass: 40 tons
Movement Type: Tracked
Power Plant: Starheart 240
Cruising Speed: 64.8 kph
Maximum Speed: 97.2 kph
Armor: StarSlab Standard
Armament:
     1 PPC
     1 Machine Gun
Manufacturer: TriStar Instellar
     Primary Factory: Sherwood
Communication System: Tristar Multilink II
Targeting & Tracking System: TriStar TrackMaster III w/ ArtiSpot
Introduction Year: 3025
Tech Rating/Availability: IS Level 1
Cost: 1.38 million C-bills

Overview
The Hathor is what happens when the Common Heart program's one inflexible rule meets a forty-ton hull: the StarHeart 240 goes in — it always goes in — and the engine ends up weighing nearly half the tank. Most design bureaus would call that a failure of proportion. Greene & Harvester's suspension engineers, handed the problem, were by all accounts delighted, and built the high-speed tracked running gear the surplus power was begging for. The result races past 90 kph on terrain of all types — a tracked vehicle with a hovercraft's schedule — and stands as the program's happiest accident: the mandate did not choose an engine for this tank; the tank was grown around the engine, and grew fast. Launched in 3025 alongside its lighter sibling the Horus, the Hathor pioneered the motive systems, atmospheric plant, and fire control that the Bast main battle tank would inherit outright a decade later — letting crews rotate between the family's platoons with minimal retraining, and letting the program office observe, of the Bast, that arriving second has its advantages.

Capabilities
The A-model is the flanker and headhunter: a turreted Hellstar PPC on a chassis fast enough to dictate the range, hunting light 'Mechs and harassing heavier forces from distances they cannot profitably answer. A single coaxial machine gun keeps curious infantry at bay, and that is the entire loadout — no ammunition beyond the half-ton of MG belts, no reloads to schedule, nothing to run out of except patience. Ten heat sinks let the Hellstar fire on the move indefinitely, which, at 97 kph, it is generally doing.

Deployment
The Hathor serves the expeditionary establishment alongside the Bast — fusion machines remain too expensive for militia and reserve formations, whose fuel-cell 'Mal' hulls own the home game. In the away game the Hathor is the screen, the flank guard, the pursuit element, and the reconnaissance-by-fire specialist, and its crews — who refer to their mounts, with documented affection, as the "hotrod forty-ton murder factory" — hold the type in the specific regard reserved for vehicles that are faster than everything that outguns them and better-armed than everything that can catch them.

History
The Hathor made its reputation in the Periphery reaches, where pirate hunting rewards exactly what it offers: speed to force the engagement, reach to end it, and a logistics tail of half a ton. Its defining employment came in the Fourth Succession War, where Hathor platoons ran as mobile headhunter units with the Guards' 7th Sherwood, using pace and the brigade's ceaseless C3 chatter to find, fix, and delete enemy command elements — work that made the type few friends among opposing staff officers and a permanent home in Guards doctrine. Two generations on, the Hathor remains the expeditionary force's favorite problem-starter, and the crews' nickname has never required revision.

Type: Hathor
Technology Base: IS Level 1
Tonnage: 40

Equipment		Mass
Internal Structure		4
Engine	240 Fusion	-
Cruising MP:	6
Flanking MP:	9
Heat Sinks:	0	-
Control Equipment:		2
Turret:		-
Armor Factor:	120	-

AT-40A - 1.38 million C-bills - 0 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Hathor AT-40A.blk

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
Machine Gun Ammo - Half	Body	1	0.5
PPC	Turret	3	7
Machine Gun	Turret	1	0.5

AT-40B - 1.30 million C-bills - 0 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Hathor AT-40B.blk

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