Great start to what could be a great series. Certainly leaves us wanting more.
I like the technobabble – which was thankfully kept simple, and was just enough to paint a vivid picture of something other-worldly.

hmm, do neural scans hurt?
I hope he kicks some Marauder butt!

Well, if it leaves you wanting more, you could always write a sequel! Worst I’d do is ignore it. :) Or else you could go and read the other Aegis/Marauders stuff in the ficlets.ficly.com archive that I wrote back on the old site.

And the faster the scan is, the more painful it is. Truly painless scanning would take an hour or more, but the protagonist didn’t want to be still in process when the Marauders busted in.

But there wasn’t room to put that in the ficlet. Nor to have the protagonist have the delightful experience of talking to “himself”. Alas.

(I’m kind of reluctant to sequel my own stuff, at least at this point, because I think it creates the impression that I have some plan that I want to follow and don’t want any sequels from other people getting in my way. The fact is, I want to see what other people write—though I wouldn’t mind if those other people read my other Aegis/Marauders stuff first so they could get up to speed on what the universe is like.)