Concerning fragility outside of the pod; are we sure he meant he felt weak from muscle atrophy or was it because he could be perma killed by a mere human with a shank were as commanding starship he could shrug off multiple nuclear detonations?
well I don't talk about this much ICly, but Verin is super-paranoid about that. to the extent that the commlink sleeve he wears all the time contains a built in recorder good for a week of continuous 360 degree footage and sound, and a fluid router attached to a biomonitor. If his vitals flat-line, then a "cold" backup clone somewhere in the cluster - and he has a lot of them, of varying degrees of legitimacy and secrecy, up to and including a few even
he doesn't know the location of - gets woken up and gets to watch a movie of his previous self's last few days and hours.
There's a grace period, of course. He doesn't want a clone waking up and then having to be given the awkward news that "no, I'm not dead, my arm was just cut off. Guess you'd better get back in the box."
The point being that if somebody does kill Verin in the meat, it just pisses him off and the worst he has to show for it is somewhere between a day or so and about thirty months of amnesia.
I consider these to be rather excessive but still sensible precautions for somebody who can otherwise expect to be indefinitely serially mortal. We know that "cold" backup clones are a standing part of the PF, I see no good reason at all why a careful capsuleer wouldn't make extensive use of them.