Very easy: when you tab to select the ships one after another, your escorts are automatically skipped, so press alt-tab (but you'd better actually change tab to something else since alt-tab might make your PC make unwanted things) until you have one of your escorts selected. Then contact him with (default key) Y, and you have the option to release him from servitude. Think about it for one second before doing that, then click. He should tell you something like "I'll buy you a synthale next time we meet!", end the communication, and you'll see it is no longer one of your escorts.
The way your escorts behave depends on their inherent AI: if it is fundamentally a freighter, its cargo will add to yours but they won't fight for you nor help you capture other ships. On the other hand, warships won't carry cargo even if they can but will defend you and their crew will help you capture ships (a tenth of the crew of all your warship non-mission-assigned escorts will be added to your crew for the purpose of the ship capture formula).
One last thing: now that Nova has been released on PCs and an EV TC is out you do no longer need an emulator (you'll need to register Nova for a mere 30$, but it's worth it since not only you have Nova, but the EV and EVO TCs are free with it)
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