Talons

Red Dagger may be one of the most obnoxious pirate group in the galaxy, but at the end of the day everyone Red or Fed knows that the Talons are indisputably the best pirate group in the galaxy. Where they came from and how they started is unknown to this day, but many in the Federation believe they trace their roots to the first colonists who left earth to explore the stars.

Highly competent, the Talons only take in the greatest of the great, with ships reverse engineered from Herald tech much like Triglav. Talon ships are not particularly sturdy (Albeit much more than the Reds, civilian ships, or Hammerheads), but they can move around a battlefield like nobody's business and generally pack enough firepower to crush the opposition, sporting a specialized weapons optimization system that can link with nearby ships and collaborate data to provide better weapons locking, energy distribution for reloading, and structural analysis for hitting weak points in shields and hulls, which combines to provide a net gain in lock-on, reload, and general damage to all ships within the bandwidth radio transmission range which is, however, very short.

The Talons are also by far the most professional of the pirate groups. They always allow a surrender, they're polite with their victims, they attempt to minimize casualties, they never shoot down escape pods, and as long as you comply with their demands you and your crew will find yourselves alive on your ship without the cargo but with enough fuel and rations to make a jump to safe harbor. As such, the Federation is usually more lenient towards Talons, sentencing life imprisonment over execution in most cases. Oftentimes, imprisoned Talons are allowed out under work-release programs to join the SOF in taking down other pirate gangs, which accounts for a significant portion of the SOF's influx.

Getting your hands on a Talon ship is extremely difficult, but not impossible.

Word to the wise: Don't ask a Talon about what happened with the Compact. They prefer to act as if that little chapter of their history never happened.

The Talon homeworld is uncreatively known as Talon Prime. For the fear these guys strike into the hearts of millions, they seem to find it hilarious how uncreative they have named their homeworld.

Life in Talon space is a decent way to make a honest living. Pay your protection fees and the Talons will ensure you get where you need to go. It isn't as safe as the Feds or as free as the Independents, but there is enough of a life to live that people get by in relative comfort.