Sunny staggered as the ship came out of warp lurching forward with one foot and throwing up one hand to catch herself against the viewing deck wall. A strong hand caught her from one side, and she looked down to see Adam had her by one arm his feet planted like the roots of a coiltree. The man had not been phased in the slightest.

"I remember when we used to have to strap ourselves in for warp." He said mildly.

"I remember that time you pissed yourself." She teased

He blushed, "You weren't there for that, and in my defense a lot of people did. We were warping without dampeners, which is practically fatal to some species."

"Sure, whatever pissboy."

He shot her a look crossing his arms, "Fine, I guess you don't want to see the surprise." He turned his head away his back facing her.

She sighed and rolled her eyes, "Oh come on, I want to see the surprise."

"No no, Pissboy does not want to show you the surprise."

She crossed her arms, "Maybe if I offer to apologize.... And do the thing that he likes?"

The human turned to look at her with his one good eye tilted his head thoughtfully for a moment and then nodded, "Very well."

He stepped forward towards the observation window, "Prepare to be amazed." He slammed his hand against the button with one hand. Sunny lifted a hand to cover her face as the room was flooded with burning orange light. As her eyes adjusted, she found herself looking out into space upon a star, or three stars to be more accurate.

The UV dampened viewing screen allowed her a closer look as much of the light was reduced to save her eyes.

She saw one very large star, in a coupling with a much smaller bright white star, both of which were circled by a third star distant from that.

"Behold, Polaris."

Sunny's eyes widened, "Eedacheel?"

"She's technically three stars. The big one is Polaris Aa that little one is Ab and that distant one is B, all together they constitute what we know as the north, or in your case, southern star." He opened his mouth to continue speaking, but just as he did Simon burst through the doors and onto the main deck.

"Admiral! You have to see this."

Adam frowned in mild annoyance, having ordered Simon not to disturb him unless absolutely necessary. Then again, he did tell Simon this, and sometimes the two of them had different ideas about what absolutely necessarily meant. Simon had a tendency to assume that almost everything was necessary , and Adam had a habit of putting things off to be less important than they probably were.

"I want you to think for a moment lieutenant. IS anyone dying, is the ship going to crash, or are we being hailed by a warlike alien species bent on the destruction of earth."

Simon paused to really consider this question, and Adam sighed.

"No sir, but do signs of alien life count?"

***

Sunny had not expected that, and clearly neither had Adam as they both found themselves standing on the bridge in awed silence staring at the images slowly filtering in from their onboard telescope, which was having no difficulty sending images to them that were as crisp and clear as a reflection on a still lake.

"What-is-that?" Adam muttered in astonishment as he stared at the viewing screen before them.

"I don't know." Simon muttered softly

"Dyson sphere?" Adam wondered

One of the deck officers shrugged, "Even if it was, we don't have enough experience with such technology to determine whether that is accurate or not."

Adam nodded, "Than someone go see if lord Celex is feeling well enough to come speak with us. If anyone is going to know what that thing Is, it might be him."

They stood on the main deck, waiting and watching as the images continued to flood in. The main star Polaris Aa seemed normal all things considered, big and bright as many stars are considered to be, but the small star, Polaris Ab was all together different. From a distance it did not look particularly changed in any real or meaningful way. It was simply a star, but on closer inspection, and with the correct filtration systems, they found a massive structure.

A massive skeletal structurer that curved and twisted around the star to encase it in a ball like sphere of unknown providence. From here, thought it looked small and delicate, each piece of metal must have been hundreds of miles wide as this star, despite being smaller than its supergiant, was larger than Earth's star, so the structure was unfathomably large.

What else could it be other than a Dyson sphere, though the structure didn't seem to cover enough of this tar to make it particularly good at it's job.

There was a clattering at the entrance, and a moment later, a small group stepped into the room.

Lord Celex accompanied by his son lord Avex were carried into the room by one of the deck crew and deposited on the empty Captain's chair seeing that Adam was not currently using it. Lord Celex was looking better than he had been a few weeks ago. His hair was growing back, giving the impression of a creature distinctly smaller than they had assumed.

What had shocked most people was the surprising amount of fingers or toes the Celzex seemed to have on their feet, generally hidden by their fur. The dexterous way in which the feet could rotate at any angle, and the way they could grip with a few of the fingers and used the others ones to complete work, made it clear how they had managed to build complex machines. With his hair buzzed short rather than long, it was easy enough to see.

He had only recently started coming out of the infirmary to be seen, as the withdrawal symptoms and his own physical weakness had made it prudent for him to secret himself away for the time being.

Adam walked over and bowed once before standing back up again, "Your highness. I assume you were briefed about our problem on the way over."

Lord Celex motioned him closer and he did as requested, resting one hand one the chair, to which lord Celex took as an invitation and clambered up onto Adam's shoulder. The Celzex were surprisingly good at climbing, and watching the strange twisting of his many fingered feet, it became clear why that was so.

He crawled up, gripping the strong fingers of his hand/feet around Adam's shoulder before examining the window.

He was quiet for a long time, "That is not a Dyson sphere." He said firmly."

"You seem very sure about that."

"If it is, it is a very poorly crafted one..... no.... I think that this is something completely different. You see the large circular hole in one side of the structure?"

"Yes?"

"That was put there deliberately and would not make sense when constructing an object to harvest energy. In fact it looks more like a window or an outlet to me. I would have to get closer to the structure to really understand how it works."

Sometimes Adam forgot that the Celzex were part of the most advanced alien races in the galaxy. To him, this machine might as well have been magic, but to Lord celex he might as well have been explaining the working of a bicycle. Perhaps he wasn't an expert on it, but most people know the basics.

Before any of them really knew what was going on, Adam and the others were in their space suits preparing for a descent towards Polaris Ab.

The doors to the docking bay opened spilling burning yellow light in through the airlock doors. Dark and light fought each other in a great battle across the bast expanse of a black sky as their shuttle slipped out of the airlock and began it's journey towards the burning star.

They all bounced lightly in their seats bodies pulling against their registration as they flew out of the ship's gravity field. Lord Celex had offered to accompany them, and with some hesitation he had been allowed. He seemed to have enough energy to accompany them, and the surgery for his heart had been preformed long enough ago that Even Krill admitted it would be fine to let him accompany them.

And so they floated through the blackness of space, approaching the star as close as they dared without worries of overloading the heat shield . The front viewing screen was used to dampen ambient light so they could finally get their first true look at the star without the aid of telescopes.

Still thousands of miles away, the star dwarfed their vision, filling up the entirety of their viewing screen.

Adam turned the ship to the side and began to slowly orbit the star keeping just outside their maximal heat range as they stared at the massive towering structure that surrounded it.

Again, it was incomprehensibly large, with metal beams thousands of miles across, or at least they could assume that it was metal, for what else could it be?

The group of scientists stared out of the windows in awe even as they took readings of the star.

Shaking their head slowly in consternation.

Lord Celex and his son huddled together in the copilot seat and whispered to each other through their comms so that the others could not hear. Adam was left to his own thoughts, the only non-scientist aboard the ship with nothing more to offer than his ability to fly, and so there was nothing to do but stare at awe and wonder at the metal structure, which was more than occasionally blasted by a sudden rolling flare, which would jump up from the star's surface and kiss the metal with a bright orange arm. As far as he could tell there were no ill side effects left behind by the rolling of these flares, which was difficult to fathom.

As far as he knew, the only product a star could not use for fusion was Led, and even then Led could at least be melted. Whatever this substance was, it seemed unaffected by the incredible heat of the star. As far as he could recall from his obsession as a boy, the heat of the sun was somewhere between 5,000 to 6,000 kelvin, and the highest melting point of any metal was Tungsten which was somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 kelvin.

So the fact that this structure existed at all was mind boggling. Tantalum carbide, a sort of ceramic material, could only resist heat just a little past 4,000 kelvin . And if this star was like any other star that the Admiral had researched as a child, than it was clear that the surface of the star was going to be cooler than the corona, which could reach up to millions of degrees. There was no way that someone would have been able to build this structure with the metal being as close as it was, just no way.

"I do not believe it is a Dyson sphere as I said before."

He turned to look at Lord Avex and his son, who had finally decided to share their findings with the rest of the group.

"I believe, at some point the structure was used to amplify the star."

Adam stared at him.

"What do you mean... amplify?"

"You do know the definition of the word do you not/"

There was some of the emperors old sass coming back. It was good to see it.

"I mean yes, I understand. You meant it is there to make the star brighter."

"Millions of times brighter is my guess."

Adam shook his head In confusion, "Why would anyone bother doing that, its sitting next toa supergiant, why would it need to be brighter, and while we are on the subject, why not do it to the supergiant itself."

Lord Celex shook his head at the poor barbaric human as if he was a neanderthal still rubbing to sticks together for heat.

"Perhaps you have never built a Dyson sphere before, but the construction of one takes thousands of years and requires and ungodly amount of harvested material to do. The sphere must e BIGGER than the star that you are trying to encase and so will probably have an ungodly mass to go along with it. While we can build spheres large enough to encompass dwarf stars, even we have no figured out how to make something at this scale. The physics along is nearly impossible, as building structures at this size promotes the likelihood of it's own gravity collapsing itself inward into a sphere, which most mass likes to do at that kind of size. Whoever built this knew far more than even WE did."

That left a silence in the cockpit as the group thought on what that was to mean.

There was an entity out here that was more advanced than the Celzex.

"Of course I doubt we are likely to meet them." The fluffy creature mused, "It seems almost completely abandoned, and whatever focusing equipment was originally used to amplify the star is either degraded or was taken away when the star was no longer in use."

Adam nodded looking down at his hands as he took the ship for one more turn, heading back t their agreed time.

He could hear the scientists in the background debating with the Celzex on what all of this could mean. Adam, for his part, stayed quiet, there was nothing that he was going to be able to add to the conversation, but there was one thing that was bothering him, soemthing that he couldn't shake off as being entirely coincidence.

He had always thought it amazing that Earth and Anin held the same polar star.

Amazing coincidence yes.

But now that he was looking at this.

How strange was it that it was a polar star to two planets at roughly the same distance away, AND alien life had been working here for what must have been thousands of years.

It seemed unlikely to him that those three things were unrelated.

And what about the amplification system.

To Adam, the parallels to that of a lighthouse, were too much to overlook.

The coincidences were just to strong.