Knight and Squire #0

"Hoi! We're for it if we can't get out of these bonds before those Metaleks of Galaxy X get back!"

"Never fear, son, for the Knight and Squire can never be defeated!"

The armoured figure hoisted himself up against the heavy girder.

"If I can just...ngh![/size]..." the Knight grunted. "...reach my wrist-mounted radio control panel...there!"

There was a low droning sound, and then the riffle of nylon parachutes opening.

"The Micro-Airborne Division!" the Squire chirped. "Hurrah for the paras!"

"A steady hand at the trigger buttons...and...yes!"

There was a twang as the ropes snapped loose and a soft thud as the two costumed heroes landed down in the mud.

The robotic toy soldiers floated down around them, and the Squire snapped off a salute to the tiny gunmen who had saved their lives.

"These miniature mechanical marvels of yours truly are astounding, Cyril," the Knight said, rattling in new commands using the clunky dials and switches that were built into his gauntlet. "It's good to see that your evening engineering classes with Professor Carter of Dinchester aren't going to waste. Speaking of which, we'd best round up these dastardly destructive diggers before you miss the school bell."

"Oh lor'," Squire said, clapping a hand to his scarlet steel helmet. "I'd plum forgotten about school. I've a Latin Vocab test to swot up on before lunchtime as well!"

Percival turned, examining the terraformed landscape that had been churned up around him.

"Well, I wouldn't worry too much about that, Cyril. These Metalek invasions usually get cleared up in a half hour or so, and with our faithful cavalry-bike you'll make it in time for the register."

"That's right," Cyril said. "Just think of the damage the Metalek worker machines could do if their rare alien fuel, ü-neon, didn't strike out all the time."

"It doesn't bear thinking about, Cyril. Now come on, we can still save the grounds of Worden Castle from being completely dug up. Wonder what they're doing to the place."

The miniature soldiers formed up in marching order and followed father and son as they scrambled up and out of the still-smoking crater where the Metalek invasion craft had come crashing down into the chalky Wordenshire hills.

As they mounted the rise, Cyril gave a low whistle.

Beyond them lay the quiet hamlet of Lower Worden, and through it ran a straight unerring line of houses and roads demolished under great rolling tyre tracks, stretching all the way to where the wooded grounds of Worden Castle had been.

"They've turned it into a maze!" Cyril said, pointing. Five yellow bodies - metallic flesh moulded into the familiar shapes of earthwork diggers, bulldozers and concrete mixers - could be made out moving between great swathes of blackened earth that had been churned up and shaped into a giant spiral maze that wound its way around Worden Castle.

Hissing and crunching and the sounds of alien labour could be heard as emerald green shrubbery sprouted up and grew across the walls of soil and rock, and more and more corners and corridors were pushed and pressed into place.

The Knight rubbed his hand against the chin of his helmet.

"Looks like we'll have to work our way through the maze to the castle, and there defeat whatever sinister shenanigans these monstrous Metaleks have masterminded for us."

Cyril whistled, and was answered by a clunky modified motorbike that revved up to meet them. With a yell, the Knight swung himself onto the bike, and his son into the sidecar, and they drove off in the wake of the Metaleks.



Cyril stood in the rain and tried to straighten out the piece of paper.

The Biro scrawl was beginning to wash away, staining his hands. He blinked bloodshot eyes and attempted to focus, as the small gathering of strange, masked and suited individuals waited with heads bowed.

Cyril mumbled something and then coughed. He began to speak.

"If I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home."

His words began to slur. He stopped talking, and his mouth just gaped for a moment. He dropped the paper and brought his hands up to his face, rubbing his eyes.

The man in the fluffy white cap and dusty black suit looked down at the ground. A young man with a subdued red hood pulled out from underneath a dark coat looked around and spotted a man sat at the back, a smart black suit wrapped around a muscle-bound frame, eyes concealed by an expensive-looking pair of shades. A thinner, older man stood holding an umbrella over the two. Both looked sombre, contemplative.

"Except he didn't die in some foreign field, did he?" Cyril said, slumping. "He died in Whitechapel, with a knife in his throat."

There was a murmur and the man in the fluffy white cap slowly got up.

"He wanted that read because he always thought he was going to die in a war. Thought he should have died in the war. A bloody-minded old man pretending to be Batman of the Home Counties. Stupid. It was all so stupid."

The man in the fluffy white cap put a hand on his shoulder and began to usher him to one side.

"It's alright. I'm done. Done with him, done with this."

Cyril stormed off, leaving the dreary little graveyard by the quiet Church of St. Glinglin behind him.



Pow!

The yellow mechanical arm of the digger broke away, dragged along and away from the screeching Metalek worker.

"Good thinking using the cavalry-bike's winch, son!" Percival called. "They've adapted since last time to a stronger alloy, making our punches ineffective!"

Cyril, his brilliant yellow tabard flashing in the sun, clambered up inside what would be the driver's cab on a construction vehicle and clung on to the organic railing as the mechanical invader began to shake and rear up on its tyre treads.

"Quick, son! Put the super-cooled ice cube into its geotronic thinking matrix! They still can't withstand extreme temperatures!"

Cyril pulled the smoking ice cube from a specially-insulated pouch on his belt. The Metalek shook and rocked as he popped open a sealed compartment and jammed the ice cube into the swirling mess of blue light and crackling neuro-electricity within.

He jumped free and into the arms of the Knight just as the Metalek exploded.

"Good work, son. Now, back to the task at hand." Percival gestured to the paths ahead in the maze. "Which way do we go from here?"



"Hold up, Cyril."

Cyril stopped, fumbling with the keys to the battered cavalry-bike. He kept his head down, his face blurred with rain and washed-out blue ink.

The man in the suit behind him removed his tinted shades and tucked them away.

"I know that you're sorry to hear about my dad, I don't need a speech from the Batman about how England lost a great hero, and I don't need any help from you, thank-you, Bruce."

Cyril stared at his bike for a moment, and finally succeeded in jamming the keys into the ignition.

"I think you do need help, Cyril," Bruce said, simply.

"If I do, it really isn't from your sort," Cyril said, gunning the bike's engine. "You made a daft old man think he could be like you, you damn Yank. He had white hair when he started playing dress-up, you know that?"

Bruce waited, patiently. Cyril sat on the bike, staring back at the small gathering in the graveyard.

Alfred, a black umbrella held above his head, emerged from the church and joined them. He surveyed the silent pair and coughed, politely. "If I may, sir, I think you may have done your father a disservice by allowing Brooke's immortal words to go unfinished. Let's see now:"

"And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven."

Cyril looked up at Alfred.

Bruce put a hand out. "Whatever you decide to do - costume or otherwise - I'm sure it will be magnificent. Just call me if you need help, from Batman or Bruce Wayne."

Cyril said nothing, but shook his hand.

They watched the cavalry-bike kick into gear and scream away, down the road and far away from the sleepy English church where the Knight was being buried.



"I'm knackered, Dad," Cyril puffed as they edged their way past an acidic pool that filled a turning of the maze.

"Not to worry, my boy," Percival said. "Your radio-controlled air force are keeping us on the right path. Only four more death-traps to get past and then we're home free for the castle, if you don't count the patrols of Metalek workers."

"I suppose, Dad."

They edged further along, pressed against the alien hedgerows that towered over them.

"What would happen if you stopped being the Knight?" Cyril asked, suddenly.

Percival thought about it. "If I retired, you mean?"

"I suppose."

"Then, if you were old enough, you'd get your turn to be the Knight."

They jumped the last few feet to the other side of the acidic pool, and ducked as a girder swung down from the hedge.

"I'd be a good Knight, I think," Cyril said, finally, as the girder whistled overhead. "but I don't want you to retire just yet."

Percival chuckled, and they stepped clear. "Don't you worry about your old man, now. I still have plenty of fight in me yet. Now, help me get this girder off these ropes. According to our robotic reconnaissance the next obstacle involves super-charged magnets, so..."



"I'm fine, I haven't touched the stuff in months," Cyril said, talking into the headset in his helmet while pulling at levers and tapping away at rows of buttons. "Look, Bruce, I appreciate you checking in on me, but it's actually going better than I could have ever expected."

There was a garble of screams and pleas from a speaker by Cyril's head as the radio frequencies and phone lines were jammed with emergency calls and distress signals. Cyril banged his fist against it until it stopped.

Outside, flames licked up around the wide glass canopy, and somewhere far below a series of explosions rocked the cockpit.

"No, that was their fuel supplies, not mine. The ROUNCEY 1 is holding up fine. Suppression jets are handling the blaze, mag-clamps are holding the rocket intact while the survivors are lifted out on the harness lifts."

Cyril listened to the voice on the headset while he piloted his modified high-altitude hovercraft around the burning rocket ship.

"Yeah, Beryl's working out great. Between her and you all I could do was pull myself together, eh? Hold on...right. Armour works fine, too. What was that? Oh, right."

Cyril jabbed at a button and a slender robotic arm shot out of the craft, catching one of the civilians who had fallen from the debris of the launch pad's control tower.

"Good save. Might be a few more years until Britain manages a manned probe to the sun. Not sure why the Metaleks would target the launch, though. Yes, I'll look into it. Being the Knight now means more thinking time, I get that."

There was a rushing of smoke, and the glass canopy of Cyril's modified craft was obscured in black soot.

"Enjoy it? Ha, I was born to be the Knight."



Crashing through the doors the Knight and Squire burst into the main hall of Worden Castle, fists raised.

"Come on out, Metalek-Control. It could only ever have been you behind this vicious vendetta against the Sheldrake family who foiled your first invasion back in the 13th century! But we'll stop your historical hatred here and now, won't we, son?"

Cyril raised his fists, clad in their scarlet gauntlets. From beneath the black domino mask that his helmet revealed he grinned. "And get back in time for Latin Vocab, Dad!"

Percival laughed. "Right you are, son!"

"THIS IS THE VOICE OF THE METALEK-CONTROL! YOU MAY HAVE DEFEATED THE MAZE OF THE METALEKS, CODENAMES KNIGHT AND SQUIRE, BUT WHAT YOU DO NOT KNOW IS THAT THIS WAS A TRAP! THROUGH THE INDUSTRY AND INGENUITY OF THE METALEK EMPIRE, YOUR CASTLE HAS BEEN CONVERTED INTO A METALEK HYPER-GALACTIC JUMP CONSTRUCT! YOU HAVE NEVER FOUGHT A METALEK IN THEIR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT OF GALAXY X, I THINK? A HA HA HA!"

"Dad, I can feel the room shaking!"

Percival braced himself against the wall. "Hold on, son. Galaxy X or otherwise, we can still beat these insidious inter-galactic invaders!"

"I can't see colours anymore!" Cyril shouted. "It's like I'm seeing everything through a cracked lens!"

"Hold on, son! Hold on!"

There was a blinding flash of darkness and the main hall seemed to warp inwards, turning in on itself in some non-Euclidean inversion loop.

The two floated backwards, gravity sent spinning askew, as the Metalek-Control entered the room.

"In their natural form they seem almost like the Architeuthis, or giant squid, that grace Earth's deepest waters!" Percival marvelled, as the alien overlord squeezed more and more of its mass into the room.

"How do we defeat it and return home, dad?" Cyril called, his face bubbling and stretching as if made of elastic.

"The same way we defeat anything that threatens good old England, or Earth, son. With bravery, intellect, and honest force of arms!"

"YOU CANNOT HOPE TO DEFEAT THE METALEK-CONTROL! WORTHY ADVERSARIES THOUGH YOU MAY HAVE BEEN, WE WILL DESTROY YOU AND CONTINUE OUR RECONSTRUCTION OPERATION OF EARTH UNOPPOSED! WE ARE THE DEMOLISHERS AND THE BUILDERS! OURS ARE THE BLUEPRINTS THAT WILL SHAPE THE MULTIVERSE! OURS- WAIT! HYPER-GALACTIC JUMP CONSTRUCT BREACH IN PROGRESS! THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE! THE METALEKS THOUGHT OF EVERYTHING! THE METALEKS LAID THE FOUNDATIONS TO THE PERFECT DEMISE OF EARTH'S HEROES! THE METALEKS-"

The explosion rocked the hall, throwing the shifting fluidic mass of the Metalek-Control back. Through the walls, fragments of the English countryside could be seen, phasing in and out with an alien landscape of flashing orange lights and blocky yellow and black stripes.

"Didn't you hear, Metalek-Control? The Knight and Squire can never be defeated!"

Percival and Cyril turned and gasped as the two new heroes sprang through the swirling vortex.

"Dad, he's dressed as...ulp!...the Knight! Only more futuristic!"

"Yes, son, and that's the Squire...only she's a girl!"

"Oh, I remember this one," the new Knight said, floating up to the two heroes of the past and grabbing on to their shoulders. "You'll spend all of Latin Vocab puzzling it over."

"Wotcha, oldies," the new Squire said, springing over their heads. "and I thought this one looked retro now."

"I don't know who you are, strangers, but I know one thing," Percival smiled from behind the smooth steel visage of his helmet. "You're dressed the part for being good guys."

"Let's punch this...ah, I can do this..." the new Knight frowned, "salacious squid super-villain into a swift surrender, then we can get back to our time and you two can get back to your galaxy!"

With a shout, two generations of Knight and Squire charged at the Metalek-Control.

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