Note: I think "Mansions of the Lord" from We Were Soldiers fits well for this chapter. I normally don't post songs, because I just use my private playlist, and don't feel comfortable sharing, but this one fits so well, sadly. I had it on loop while writing this.

Bolthole Station, Republic of Haven

A while earlier…

"T-minus one hour to CNO Theisman's arrival." squawks the station intercom.

In an otherwise empty office, two officers are having a casual conversation, and sipping on their drinks, using the alcohol from Admiral Foraker's private collection, in memory of her. "I wish Admiral Foraker could be here. She always seemed to give this base energy, besides the project plans for tech goodies that seemed to get turned out by magic." says one of them, Captain 'Five' Anders.

"Me too. I still remember her saying 'Hard things we can do right away. Impossible things may take a bit longer, but we can do them anyway.'." says Captain Gustav Miles, who's newer to the base, and younger. Captain Miles had worked closely with his Vice Admiral to make Project Dragonfly, once a daydream of his CO's imagination, come to life. Five slowly nods, before looking back at his drink, like it had the plans for a new SD(P) class. How did I manage to let that habit of Admiral Foraker's rub off on me?, he thinks.

"Oh, yes." says Five, who's still mourning the loss of his CO.

"It's sad she never got to see the last sets of tests of Dragonfly, the long-range targeting tests, as well as the EW countermeasures tests. She would have loved to see them, coming from a tac job at one point… Although it's not as good as Apollo, according to Admiral Chin's reports…" he says wistfully.

"None of our tech ever is as good as its Mantie counterpart. Not podnaughts, not LACs, not MDMs. We just have to make up for it in numbers, and hope that her sacrifice over Manticore has slowed Mantie invasions down." says Fives, trying to inspire people like Shannon did, to keep up the work, despite her loss. He thinks, Boy, did I not realize what I was getting into when I opened the note she had left for me before she ran off to go help Admiral Tourville… I knew she worked hard, but I thought that was because she wrote quite a few project blueprints solo, not just in her admin role.

"What do you think were the hard or the impossible things she was referring to? Podnaughts? LACs? Dragonfly? MDMs?"

"I asked her that question myself. She called Dragonfly the impossible because of our bandwidth limits. SD(P)s and LACs and MDMs she called only hard."

"Only hard? I thought those were impossible, before she went and did them!"

"So did I. But then she brought us hope and pulled those off. She helped us live to fight another day." They both sip at their drinks some more.