Chapter 53 - Teaser!

Still working on Chapter 53 which is turning out to be a world building chapter, trying to figure out where to cut it off. Really hoping for the finished chapter to drop Sunday night.

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1 Day Earlier. Federation Awards Ceremony. Arc de Triomphe. Paris. Earth. United Federation of Planets

The Arc de Triomphe was an interesting, but poignant choice for this awards ceremony and speech, I thought. It had been inaugurated in 1836 taking over 30 years to build, meant to honor those who had fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The Federation loved their history and symbols, and setting this awards ceremony here, in Paris, the capital of the Federation, and the place that would have been destroyed had I not stopped that cargo ship from striking the surface, was relevant. They’d probably make mention of all those who had given their lives in the defense of Earth and the Federation.

It was near dusk and the Arc de Triomphe was lit up rather beautifully with multi-colored lights, making the over five-hundred-year-old structure appear modern and majestic. The weather was temperate and lovely and the clean air on Earth was invigorating to an Augment with olfactory senses as acute as mine. Unfortunately, even on Bajor, on my island, very far from the worst of the Cardassians’ strip mining and poisoning of the land, I could still smell the damage the Cardassians had done in the very air. It would be decades of concerted effort and careful rehabilitation before the ecosystem of Bajor fully recovered, though many plants and animals had gone extinct during the Occupation and as such would never recover.

The Arc was the star, or juncture formed by its twelve radiating avenues. The elevated stage the President would speak at, covered in chairs for the many VIPs and award recipients, was at the western end of the Champs-Elysees. The street itself had been closed to traffic and it was gradually filling up with several thousand more spectators with every minute that passed. When it filled it up, as I fully expected, it would be an impressive sea of life, both human and alien, though of course the entire event would be broadcast throughout the entire Federation and beyond courtesy of the dozens of anti-grav camera drones that were even now flitting about chaotically, continuously broadcasting as various talking heads on the Federation News Service gave commentary in the lead up to the event.