Mongoose MON-90

Mass: 30 tons
Chassis Configuration: Biped
Power Plant: 300 XL
Cruising Speed: 108 kph
Maximum Speed: 162 kph
Armor: Standard
Armament:
     4 Medium Laser
Manufacturer: Memphis Motive Works
     Primary Factory: Memphis
Communication System:
Targeting & Tracking System:
Introduction Year: 3054
Tech Rating/Availability: Inner Sphere
Cost: 5.26 million C-bills

Overview
The MON-90 is the promise the MON-80's history made, kept. When the Helm Memory Core opened the Star League tier, MMW's engineers reached — exactly as the old hull's story foretold — for the scout first, and in 3054 delivered the Mongoose reborn on the recovered arsenal: the same thirty-ton reconnaissance body, now carrying the StarHeart 300 XL, an Endo Steel skeleton, Ferro-Fibrous plate, and the double heat sinks that let all of it fit at weight. It is the advanced-tier answer to the question the March had been asking since the Clans first appeared on its horizon — what does the Guards' oldest doctrine look like when it stops being limited by two-hundred-year-old technology — and the answer, characteristically, was not a bigger 'Mech. It was a faster, sharper-eyed version of the smallest one.

Capabilities
Where the MON-80 talks, the MON-90 sees — and having seen, hits. The 300 XL drives the little scout past 160 kph, fast enough to break contact with anything a Clan star can field and quick enough to re-cross a battlefield before its picture goes stale. The recovered tonnage buys two instruments the standard Mongoose never had: a Beagle Active Probe that strips the concealment off hidden units and reads through the electronic murk the Clans travel inside, and a Targeting Computer that turns the hull's four B3M lasers from a scout's nuisance armament into a precision battery able to place its fire exactly where the probe found the target. It keeps the Mongoose's ammunition-free endurance and its comms heritage; it adds the Star League tier's eyes and its aim. A scout that sees through the enemy's tricks, shoots with a sniper's discipline, and outruns the consequences is precisely the machine a talk-first force wants pointed at an OmniMech.

Deployment
The MON-90 goes where the Clans might, and where the standard scout's picture is not enough. It screens the 300-XL assault lances alongside the Lancer and the advanced Marauders, rides point for the Memphis Battalion, and equips the reconnaissance elements of the Clan-facing 21st Morven Grenadiers and 33rd Broken Wheel Cavalry — the formations that needed an active-probe scout the moment they stood up. It is rarer and costlier than the MON-80 it supplements rather than replaces: the March still fields the old hull by the hundred for ordinary work and reserves the -90 for the frontages where seeing through an OmniMech's ECM is worth an extralight engine's price.

History
The MON-90 is where the March's advanced tier began, and the choice was pure Memphis. When the recovered technologies matured after the Fourth Succession War and MMW needed a first platform to prove them on, the company passed over every heavier, more marketable hull and refitted the scout — because the Guards' emerging C3 doctrine wanted its network in its eyes first, and no design in the catalog had reconnaissance heritage to match. The decision was mocked off-world as typical Memphis modesty: the great houses debuted their lostech in assault 'Mechs, and Memphis debuted its in a thirty-ton reconnaissance machine nobody outside the March had thought about in a century. It was not modesty. It was priority. The scouts got the future first, in 3054, and by the time the Clan-facing regiments stood up the MON-90 was already the instrument they reconnoitered with — the smallest 'Mech in the catalog carrying the newest technology in it, which the March considers self-explanatory.

Type: Mongoose
Technology Base: Inner Sphere
Tonnage: 30

MON-80 - 2.58 million C-bills - 10 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Mongoose MON-80.mtf

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
Medium Laser	Left Arm	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Arm	1	1
Medium Laser	Center Torso	1	1
Small Laser	Head	1	0.5

MON-90 - 5.26 million C-bills - 10 Double Heat Sinks - ↓ Mongoose MON-90.mtf

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
Medium Laser	Head	1	1
Medium Laser	Center Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Arm	1	1
Medium Laser	Left Torso	1	1
Targeting Computer	LT	1	1
Beagle Active Probe	RT	2	1.5