this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Just hit 'em with an EMP. Your ship isn't going anywhere while unpowered, even the jump drive will have a "spooling up" period that can be interrupted, and even the most basic, disposable form of thrust - being a solid fuel rocket - can't be fired without a spark. You either have an electronic starter, disabled by the EMP, or else someone crawls up the exhaust tube with a Bic lighter and sacrifices every component atom of their existence to the gods of fiery speed.
The game Starsector has a neat play on this, where certain ships can fire off an "interdiction pulse" which is a short range directed EMP that shuts down the engines of whoever it is pointed at. You can outrun it with a good heading and good tactics, you can juke it with careful positioning, or you can go dark and camp in an asteroid belt and hope the space cops miss you on their search. But if you get got by the interdiction pulse you've got a good 60 seconds or more of being a sitting duck in space. No engines, no comms, you're lucky if the life support even keeps pumping oxygen while the corvettes close in.
If you don't want to deal with the plot holes that massive EMP bursts bring (how do you shield your ship against it's own EMPs? How do you pierce a shielded ship with one?) you could make an "interdiction module" be a legally mandated piece of equipment in every ship, which when activated, cuts power to all major systems. Sort of like how ID transponders are usually handled in space operas - hell, combine the two together. Any ship running dark without a transponder active can be considered a threat to be removed on sight, not only because they aren't broadcasting an identity but also because they may not have an interdiction module installed. Skip the pulling over part of the traffic stop and step right to torpedoes, because they are probably pirates.
Naturally, real pirates won't have an interdiction module and will be attacked on sight by most security forces. A hypothetical protagonist would be able to sabotage their own module to escape capture, at the cost of being assumed to be a pirate until getting it fixed or replaced at, more than likely, a less-than-reputable shipyard.
Now that sounds like an excellent passage to write
Nice explaination on why the heroes wouldn't be trackable by the agents. They are flying in a pirate ship.
EMPs would be perfect for ruthless agents, they just want to make their boss happy. Cleaning up afterwards could net some valuable resources as well.