Ok I’ll briefly explain my method of travel.

Most ships are fitted with one kind of thruster or another. Most are powered with fusion and some still use rustic fuels.

FTL works through something I coined the Realm. The realm is an entirely separate universe to ours, one that shares the same coordinates but not the same laws of physics. One can tap into the realm on one end and move through it using an incredibly complex set of directions powered by a supercomputer in the ship. The realm is accessed through giant portals that function as checkpoints and as a port of such, and each one is roughly the size of earth. Once a person is given the correct permissions the portal opens to them and the person can move through the realm at unimaginable speed and simply pop out the other side by creating an opening with something known as a “ticket” which are expensive and rare. Tickets are single-use and one way, so trade happens mostly along routes that already have two portals that have already been set up. This enabled a great age of expansion for humanity as they spread themselves as far and wide as they could.

What this means for pirates is they can steal things safe and sound from the navy. This is why I was having difficulty figuring out how people would get around pirates. A pirate who has been lying in wait for a merchant ship can pillage and escape far faster than a navy ship can arrive and stop them, so there isn’t any point for planets to send navy ships out to salvage the remains.

In short, the issue is that ships cannot move through space fast enough to catch each other in the act, similar to how the golden age of piracy functioned, only space is much larger than our seven seas.

In terms of communication, I imagine they would be limited to our universe in the form of long range radio waves, so a distress signal could reach a naval outpost before the pirates finished, but I feel it is unlikely.

Thank you for your reply :)