Mercenary questions

[Pihe]

Hello and greetings to everyone!

I'd like to use the server upgrade time to ask a series of questions about mercenaries.
I'm basicly working on a background story of my "neutral" mercenary character.
Which means i would play a char which is neutral or friendly to every faction except those who work
against humanity or operates as a terrorist group. The services would be available to anyone who is willing to pay for it.
Since my characters background states that he is a rheinlander i wanted to choose a rheinland vessel to fly around,
my choice was the police shf Mjolnir (This ofcourse cause me trouble if i want to fly through liberty space as long as rheinland and liberty are at war.).
The choice of the ship is not a matter of discussion right now only its origin, cos the ship may change with time.
I've spoke about this briefly with Kuraine and agreed that neutral mercenaries are indeed possible but this conversation raised a number of other questions aswell.

First of all the IFF:
Kuraine told me that it would be the best to not use an IFF with this setup. Which is fine, but while talking
about the IFF he mentioned that the Freelancer IFF is linked to the BHG thatswhy i shouldnt use it.
This sounded a bit strange to me, since the freelancers are individuals who mainly work for their own good right, not against criminals like the BHG? Or have i missed something?

Secondly the matter of equipment and ship:
Should i make a special story about using police ships and equipment with this kinda character?
Or it comes naturally since the technology tab indicates that all police ships and equipment are available
for mercenaries?

Third, the zone of operation:
The ship is a rheinland one and it will stay that way if the rules will allow me keep it.
But since i'm not really connected to any faction should i be able operate just about anywhere?
Even in liberty as long as i keep out of the sight of the LSF and similar factions?

Fourth, pirates and defending trader caravans:
The situation is clear unless something like this happens:
There are some pirates against a few trade ships and their defenders.
The battle between the caravan defenders and the pirates could take a long time, or in another case the pirates have a stronger but not overwhelming force.
So the defenders decide to buy some time for the traders to escape while holding off the pirates.
The traders escape, and the defenders are still fighting. There are two choices here, fight till win or defeat, OR try to follow the traders since there could be other pirates along the trade route.
The defenders are not traders so they cant enter a system again after they have lost a fight.
Does that count as a lost pvp fight if after buying enough time for the traders they escape with this manoeuvre?
Can they enter the system again and maybe engage the same opponents while escorting the same caravan? (Ofcourse if they were killed in the fight they cant return.)

Well this is all for now i guess, thanks for the answers in advance.
Pihe alias Pehely the mercenary.