The Willow Stick

By Diane J Cornwell

When the new President of the human colony on Roseworld ordered her robot police force to arrest all surviving pirates, nineteen year old pirate Nyle Swift fled west of the spaceport on foot.

Nyle hid under a willow tree to avoided being seen when a searching craft flew overhead. Covered in mud, he grabbed a willow stick to help climb the steep bank once the craft flew away.

When Nyle arrived at a isolated small village he thought he would be safe from capture, but was recognised and locked up to wait for a craft to fly him back to the space port.

This science fiction short story follows one pirate trying to avoid capture by the Roseworld police force robots.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tift Publishing
• Release date: Dec 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005385187

Diane J Cornwell

Diane J Cornwell learnt to read before she started school at the age of five. At school she learnt to write the words she already recognized. She loved going to school. When she was asked to write a story on her holiday activities, Diane wrote a story on what she wanted to do, not what she did, and earned an “A” grade for the homework. That started her on a life of writing fiction.A bi-product of all that reading was creating her own stories about determined characters who try to make the right decisions the first time during their adventures. Stories she can read over and over again just for the pleasure of revisiting the characters.Diane wrote her first full length novel in 2007, and hopes to have many more stories created in the coming years.

Book preview

The Willow Stick

by

Diane J Cornwell

The Willow Stick

Copyright © 2021 by Diane J Cornwell

All rights reserved.

Published by Tift Publishing

Cover image copyright © 2021 by Tift Publishing

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and actions are either products of this author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the web site where purchased and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

The Willow Stick

About the Author

Other Titles

The Willow Stick

1

A low pitched hum warned nineteen year old Nyle Swift that a runabout was flying towards him and his companions. The space port must have finally realised he and his two companions had fled west, and ordered their capture.

One rumour Nyle believed before he fled Roseworld space port was that the newly arrived robots used infrared to locate humans. And he had no doubt that a robot would be on the fast approaching runabout, watching for any hint of Nyle’s heat signature on the ground.

Incoming, Nyle shouted to his two companions before he dropped to the muddy river bank next to a fallen tree. He shrugged his backpack straps off his shoulders before he crawled under the tree trunk. He ignored the smells of mud and rotting leaves near his face as he reached out to pull his backpack closer. Then he noticed sunlight covered his left boot.

He twisted slightly to reach down and frantically scraped mud away from beside his right leg. The sound of the approaching craft grew louder, so he dug faster, not worrying about broken fingernails, or cuts on his hands. He could worry about infections once the danger was gone.

Suddenly he had enough room to move his knees and feet further into the shadow of the fallen tree trunk.

He wiped mud from his hands onto his face and neck while he searched for his two companions, careful not to shake any more dead leaves off the smaller branches.

Nyle could not see twenty year old Mark Fuller, so assumed Mark was hidden from view.

At least Mark had calmly plastered mud over his ebony skin when Nyle suggested they