A Series

The being with its face on its body (see here) is a Naqsan, not an Aleriona. (Several of these The Star Fox covers are downright weird.)

As I keep saying, a frequent scene in Anderson's works is a character with a problem suddenly realizing the solution but not yet articulating it. By contrast, Gunnar Heim suddenly realizes and immediately articulates:

"'I'd like to go out myself!' he shouted.
"'This would be piracy,' Coquelin sighed.
"'No...wait, wait, wait.' The thought flamed into being. Heim sprang to his feet. 'Privateers. Once upon a time there were privately owned warships.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Marque and Reprisal" IN Anderson, The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson (Framingham, MA, 2009), pp. 385-435 AT p. 405.

A space privateer is a perfect premise for an sf series. This story did become a series although nowhere near as long as it could have been. Anderson tells us how Heim's privateering began and how it ended but merely summarizes what happened between so there is potential for other authors to fill in this gap.