First, great chron.
Second, about the soft clone issue, I would say this proves that it is possible, just expensive. The key is in the last few lines I think. For the moment of podding, the capulseer exists only as data. And the thing about data is that it is static. Therefore, it can be saved. So, even if you want to buy into the idea that a brain scan destroys the brain (which I think is menctioned in a chron someplace), all you have to do is pod yourself, and then save the data that comes in. Easy enough if you have money to bribe the techs, or have your own clone bay. Then, go out and get killed if you have too, and when you are confirmed dead, whoever is working for you brings out your clone, uploads the saved data, and you are left mildly confused, and possibably much much richer.
Third, I think most of this is meant as an incarna teaser. They already hinted at it in the incarna trailers with some things you need to get done in person, off the record.
Fourth, I think there is a clue to the sleeper mistery in here, as well as what we might be doing in Incarna. I haven't hread anything about this C3 drug, so I will assume that it is not on the market as a drug. The chron menctions what if we never came back to a body. And this C3 drug can compartimalize our minds. So, let us follow a possible trail for this capulseer backwards to the rim where she came from. Let us say 0.0 space. Maybe she has a supercarrier or Titan she flies. But think, she doesn't need all the information about piloting and shield operations to go on a trip like this, probably doesn't even need anything she learned in pod pilot school if she just takes shuttles to Jita, and it sounds like she doesn't have a ship there. So, using this drug, she stored all that data, and hopped out of her pod in the equivalent of an alpha clone. That one clone can store our life story before we became capsulers, I doubt a few more years would strain it. And she goes off to Jita, knowing that if something does happen, so can just reclone, and then plug her skills back in. And since this is the only body wandering around, there are not multiple clones, which are against the law. Of course, what do we care for laws?
But here is the interesting part. Those skills she leaves behind in her ship. Would it just sit there, or could it run the ship while the body was gone. Without a human drive, it might be a robot, but a very well skilled robot, with knowledge of every fleet engagement, every skirmish the pilot had ever been in. There are theories that the sleepers did something like this, becoming the data that runs their ships. Maybe we are about to do the same.
Anyway, my take on this stuff. However CCP plays it, it is a good story.