Initially I thought you were right, Radio. But I had a weird inkling feeling in the back of my head.
I happen to be in a game with two subs heading at an outpost with a pirate, so I went in and checked. The first sub interacts with the pirate.
It does makes sense, though. The pirate is heading in a straight line, outpost to outpost, even though it is targeting the second sub. I just think we are used to seeing the pirate come from a different angle.
Though, also - if the pirate targets a captured sub of ours sent from the same outpost the pirate is sent from, even in a long line of captured specialists - as we have seen many times before - the pirate will skip the others and go to front, enabling you to recover however many you sent.
It's strange.
"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks."
-- Mary Wollstonecraft