Crystal Dragon (The Great Migration Duology, #2; Liaden Universe, #2)

You can't go home again... What do you do when home is a conspiracy that's been discovered and destroyed? When home is a planet in a star system that's gone missing? When home means working for the destroyers of galaxies? When home is a spaceship that's calling out to the enemy? Cantra 'yos Phelium isn't a quitter, but she has more than a little problem: the Enemy has accelerated its attacks and how do you fight an Enemy whose major form of attack is the de-crystallization of everything around itself? A smuggler with a rogue soldier for a co-pilot, and a tree with an attitude for crew, Cantra's the only one who can get close to the man who holds equations that might, that just might - thwart the Enemy. All she has to do is help a young pilot from a missing world, juggle a slippery promise she never quite made to a pair of wizards, and then forget who she is along with everything, and everyone, she's ever known. Overview: Sharon Lee was born in a year of the dragon, and embodies many of the characteristics of that sign. The only person to have served as executive director, vice president, and president of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA), Sharon is by day a perhaps-not-so-mild-mannered secretary (though she does try) at Colby College. A pilot, Jela, and a smuggler, Cantra, are gentically engineered humans who learn to trust each other and join forces against the shereikas, former humans with special powers who are determined to eliminate all inferior life-forms in the universe Skeeve's sabbatical turns into a teaching stint but, unknown to him, his students are actually preparing for a deadly magical competition