New random encounters

I recently started back into Starfield with a new, viking-themed character, and I was shocked that I also had 2 brand new encounters in space:

The first was from another ship titled "Friendly Captain" who requested to open a channel. When I did, he put his very young daughter on the comm to pitch selling me lemonade for either 5 credits or 500 credits. Being the cynical space scoudrel I was, thinking it was a Spacer con / ambush like another encounter I've had, I declined and told them to stay safe. Little girl ends by telling me to "bring more money next time." Weird.

Then after raiding a POI that turned up tons of contraband, I proceeded to The Den to offload that without interference with scans. I was shocked when a ship titled "Freestar Reverant" (with the Freestar faction symbol) said they knew I was carrying contraband - without any scan at all - and demanded I surrender. It was a single ship and I had no intention of surrendering, so they left me no choice but to wipe them out. I expected a bounty with Freestar after that, but I never saw one even with the wreckage floating all around The Den.

I've often run Dark Universe: Crossfire to spawn lots of space encounters. After taking a break from Starfield, I wiped all local save data to help reclaim mod space (I had gotten up to around 30gb or so) then let it sync save data from the cloud and I proceeded to grab the mods I wanted on the new playthrough. I once again have Crossfire, but it's not spawning like it once did. Maybe it was suppressing some of the new encounters added in the Free Lanes update.

Anyone had either of these before?