"Sounds like he's the wrong guy for the job, then." So many things can go wrong on a job, Spike can't understand using somebody you know is totally unsuited to it. Of course, the one thing they always had plenty of was bodies to throw at a problem until somebody did what they needed. Shortages of food, fuel, weapons, whatever other resource sure. Always plenty of people, though.

He shrugs at the expression of sympathy. "Lots of people got it worse." That definitely is true in the nightmare late-capitalist space dystopia Spike scratched out his meager existence in.