Following the occasional encounters with different Outcast vessels, the situation I had to deal with today offered a change.
Originally, I was scrambled to deal with an Outcast Tridente threathening the integrity of Kusari by placing his gunboat only a few clicks off New Tokyo and demanding credits from the traders passing by. Aoyagi Ritsuka, the honorable gaian warrior was already in pursuit of the pirate vessel, however the captain of the gunship issued orders to flee as soon as they noticed that law enforcement was on spot. Aoyagi-san was in pursuit, but my Umibozu was located on the frontlines of the Taus, and the Outcast vessel was running torwards Shikoku.
Unfortunately, I would usually say, I never reached Shikoku. No loss however, Aoyagi-san handled the Tridente by himself, I am not aware of any specifics though. The reason for my delay is the presence of a smuggler commanding an Akegata-class container transport. The vessel, designated as Ayreo was in possession of 4198 pieces of counterfeit software, origin and destination of the shipment is unknown. My scanner however, did show some eerie readings regarding the ship's registration codes, it was a transport belonging to the Order organisation. I am more than certain however, that the ship's registration codes were obtained from the black market, therefore I didn't even take a note of it on the field. The ship's cargo interested me more, I ordered the vessel to relinquish the software for destruction. For reasons still unknown to me, the captain of the vessel thought that counterfeit software was legal to conduct business with (note: he didn't think that his cargo was not counterfeit, he thought that counterfeit software was legal), I had to inform him on the field that it was not so. Over and over again, I demanded him to drop the content of his containers, after a good two minutes of talking to a wall, he simply replied "do something already".
I did. I gave the captain a countdown to ten, which lasted for about a minute. I was rather patient with him, I would say. Since he didn't respond, I opened fire, taking his shields down. I gave another warning and issued my orders again, which resulted in me having to damage his hull. No reaction. I repeated the previous steps with trying to reason with him. Nothing happened. I blew the vessel open, I destroyed his cargo with my energy weapons.
Following that encounter, a Zoner vessel informed me of an incoming Tridente-class ship, designated as Crazy. As soon as I spotted it near a trade lane, the gunship engaged its cloaking device and vanished from my eyes. Little time went past, a modified Luxury Liner, the Pasteur research vessel under the command of Doctor Lennier jumped in from Tau-29, with a full load of Gaian wildlife onboard. I ordered him to stop, he was entirely cooperative. As it later turned out, the doctor wasn't aware of his cargo being contrabanded in Kusari, he never read the Kusari Legal Codex, according to which, there were no exeptions to the illegality of transporting Gaian wildlife. Aoyagi-san was also present, being a gaian himself, he also tought the best course of action would be dropping the animals and taking them back to Gaia.
So it happened. The doctor, even though he insisted on transporting the animals to a Kusarian research team, couldn't show evidence on that, so he eventually had to relinquish his cargo. Aoyagi-san arranged a transport back to Gaia. I was willing to refrain from fining the doctor, as a mean of thanks for his cooperation. Shortly afterwards, I did a brief patrol of the Taus, then returned my Umibozu to the hangar.