Oh, and the bit about improvised weaponry - it's not something you'd go out hunting with, or even necessarily think of until you needed it, but if you're packing a thruster that can kick out 10% of your ship's mass at .2 relative c with racing reaction times, then that's probably capable of doing at least a *bit* of damage to anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the propwash. It's too expensive and probably too inaccurate to use proactively, but it makes a heck of a defensive weapon to use when running is failing, or last-ditch weapon for when running simply isn't an option.
Of course, if you're doing it at combat speeds, the chance that you might screw up the crossover gets worse, but...
Interesting tactical note: the ability to accelerate near-instantly to a sizeable fraction of c, changing direction more or less as it suits you plays merry hell with the ability of people who think at normal human speeds to keep you inside their reaction envelopes long enough to do somehting, let along chase you when you care more about what you're getting away from than what you're going *to*. If the boskonians are hunting folks, then either they're doing it with weapons that can strike before the danger is realized, they're doing it inside of high-density areas like asteroid belts where people can't afford to go all out and then pinning them in with superior numbers, they're hitting people in places and times where they don't feel like they can *afford* to run away, or they're catching people with engines cold. Any friendlies that hunt pirates pretty much have to be able to do the same.
Oh, and given the timelines, the existence of 16-year-old ninja implies that either entire families are heading into space to settle in Hidden Asteroid, or there are kids running away from home and being accepted in (or both). The fact that there are *enough* of them that there are general rules as to what age, exactly, the ninja let their kids start doing more than milk runs means that there is a sizeable population of these kids.
What kind of breakdown do we have for fenspace population, anyway? How many people do you have to have to qualify as a significant power group? Bear in mind that this is, in a lot of ways, another America. Heading out to space requires leaving behind much of your old life - sacrificing what you have for what you might build. This is not a thing done lightly. You will not get all of the fans. You may not even get half. What sort of population numebrs are we working with?
Of course, if you're doing it at combat speeds, the chance that you might screw up the crossover gets worse, but...
Interesting tactical note: the ability to accelerate near-instantly to a sizeable fraction of c, changing direction more or less as it suits you plays merry hell with the ability of people who think at normal human speeds to keep you inside their reaction envelopes long enough to do somehting, let along chase you when you care more about what you're getting away from than what you're going *to*. If the boskonians are hunting folks, then either they're doing it with weapons that can strike before the danger is realized, they're doing it inside of high-density areas like asteroid belts where people can't afford to go all out and then pinning them in with superior numbers, they're hitting people in places and times where they don't feel like they can *afford* to run away, or they're catching people with engines cold. Any friendlies that hunt pirates pretty much have to be able to do the same.
Oh, and given the timelines, the existence of 16-year-old ninja implies that either entire families are heading into space to settle in Hidden Asteroid, or there are kids running away from home and being accepted in (or both). The fact that there are *enough* of them that there are general rules as to what age, exactly, the ninja let their kids start doing more than milk runs means that there is a sizeable population of these kids.
What kind of breakdown do we have for fenspace population, anyway? How many people do you have to have to qualify as a significant power group? Bear in mind that this is, in a lot of ways, another America. Heading out to space requires leaving behind much of your old life - sacrificing what you have for what you might build. This is not a thing done lightly. You will not get all of the fans. You may not even get half. What sort of population numebrs are we working with?