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Informationen zum Autor Vonda McIntyre is the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning science fiction author of the New York Times bestseller Star Wars: The Crystal Star . She lives in Seattle, Washington. Klappentext Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Vonda N. McIntyre continues the bestselling Star Wars saga as the ultimate space adventure unfolds in The Crystal Star . Princess Leia's children have been kidnapped. Along with Chewbacca and Artoo-Detoo, she follows the kidnappers' trail to a disabled refugee ship, from which children are also missing. Here she learns of a powerful Imperial officer with a twisted plan to restore the Empire. Meanwhile, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker are cut off from Leia by the death of a nearby star, which has caused a disruption in the Force. They have gone to the planet Crseih to investigate a report of a lost group of Jedi. Instead they find a charismatic alien named Waru whose miraculous healing powers have attracted a fanatic following. As Leia follows the path of her children across space, Luke and Han draw closer to the truth behind Waru's sinister cult. Together they will face an explosive showdown that will decide the survival of the New Republic . . . and the universe itself!Chapter 1 The children had been kidnapped. Leia ran headlong toward the glade, leaving behind the courtiers and the chamberlain of Munto Codru, leaving her attendants, leaving the young page who—completely against protocol—had stumbled into Leia’s receiving room, bleeding from nose and ears, incoherent. But Leia understood her: Jaina and Jacen and Anakin had been stolen. Leia ran, now, through the trees and down a soft mossy path that led into her children’s playground. Jaina imagined the path was a starship course, set to hyperspace. Jacen pretended it was a great mysterious road, a river. Anakin, going through a literal phase, insisted that it was only a path through the forest to the meadow. The children loved the forest and the meadow, and Leia loved exclaiming in wonder at the treasures they brought her: a squirmy bug, a stone with shiny bits trapped in its matrix—rare jewels, perhaps!—or the fragments of an eggshell. Her vision blurred with tears. Her soft slipper snared in the tangled moss. She stumbled, caught herself, and plunged onward, holding the skirts of her court robe high. In the old days, she thought, in the old days, I’d be wearing boots and trousers, I wouldn’t be hampered and tripped by my own clothing! Her breath burned in her throat. And I’d be able to run from my receiving room to the forest glade without losing my breath! The green afternoon light shifted and fluttered around her. Before her, the light brightened where the forest opened into a water-meadow, the meadow where her children had been playing. Leia ran toward it, gasping, her legs heavy. She was running toward an absence, not a presence, toward a terrible void. She cried out to herself, How could this happen? How is this possible? The answer—the only way it could be possible—terrified her. For a short time, her ability to sense the presence of her children had been neutralized. Only a manipulation of the Force could have such an effect. Leia reached the meadow. She ran toward the creek where Jaina and Jacen had splashed and played and taught little Anakin to swim. A crater was ripped into the soft grass. The leafy blades had been flattened into a circle around the raw patch of empty dirt. A pressure bomb! Leia thought in horror. A pressure bomb had gone off, near her children. They aren’t dead! she told herself. They can’t be, I’d know if they were dead! At the edge of the blast area, Chewbacca lay sprawled in a heap. Blood flowed bright against his chestnut coat. Leia fell...
