Dexter Hovis

[Schxer]

Barracuda is indeed a great upgrade. That or Kusari HF is the best ship you can have until you reach the point where you can buy Anubis. If you noticed it has class 6 weapon mounts so the weapon upgrades will be drastic when unlocked.

Contrabands are basically illegal commodities possession of which is prohibited by different factions. You must have seen NPCs asking you to stop for a moment and scan you, then say they found nothing and you're clear to leave. So if you possess contraband in your hold in such a scenario, a box with two options will show up either to drop the cargo or to fight.
Contrabands are sold on unlawful bases and dropped by unlawful NPCs but rather in small quantities. So if you're looking for trading you'll need to work on the rep sheet to be able to dock on such bases where you can buy and sell the contraband, and you'll also have to be careful if you don't want to get caught by NPCs. The ones I know are Cardamine and Artifacts. Don't remember what other contraband vanilla Freelancer had. Also, freighters would be the best option to make money efficiently through trading because of the large cargo hold they offer.