[AUTHOR'S NOTE: For clarification's sake I should inform my readers that this story is based in the "classic" worlds of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, i.e. their original pulp/comic strip continuities. Though I have included some elements (like Twiki) from other iterations, this is not a fanfic of the '70s Buck Rogers show or the recent Flash Gordon series. That said, sit back and enjoy an old school sci-fi adventure in serial form!]
WHO STEERS THE WORLD
Chapter One: AN IRRESISTIBLE PULL
The message continued to repeat on a maddening loop as the ship pitched ever more willfully towards the land mass below.
"Really, Alura, can't you do anything to shut that up?"
From her station at the rear of the bridge, the pretty blonde in a Solar Scout's ensign uniform looked up from her instruments, clearly frustrated, "Don't you think I would have by now if I could? The transmitters below are more powerful than anything we've seen before, they're overriding the whole com array!"
The young man at the navigation post, a baby-faced but steel-eyed corporal, added, "Don't you have more pressing concerns, Buck? Like not letting us end up as a crater on that planet out the window?"
The ship's pilot, growing alarmed at the speed at which the world below was rushing up to greet them, ceded his crewman's point, "When you're right, Buddy, you're right." Turning to his co-pilot, first officer, and wife - a woman as cool under pressure as any seasoned doughboy he'd served with in the Great War - Colonel Anthony "Buck" Rogers of the Interplanetary Solar Scouts, Earth Division, tried to sound characteristically casual, "Wilma, now might be a good time to consult with Theo and Huer about our options here."
"On it, Buck," Wilma responded in a clipped, military tone, an inflection she dropped when she was alone with her husband, discarded as easily as her uniform, "but keep an eye on the inertron stabilizers - they're feeling the strain."
"Will do."
She released her controls, abandoning the currently useless weapons command and reaching for a button set in the main console between the pilot and co-pilot's stations. Responding to her silent summons came the small tapping of metallic footfalls on polished bulkhead and a familiar digital voice.
"Somebody order an artificially-intelligent blowhard?"
Standing now on the bridge was a child-sized android wearing a circular computer around its neck like a large trophy medal. The computer replied to its chromium alloy-plated bearer, lights flickering across the vaguely face-like arrangement of its circuit-board, "You realize you could just as easily have been describing yourself, don't you, Twiki?"
"Snipe at each other later, you two," Wilma interjected as a strong shudder rippled through their ship's hull, "Dr. Theopolis, I assume you've brought our current situation to Dr. Huer's attention via sub-space web?"
"I have," the computer spoke again, "and I'm afraid we have reached the same conclusion-"
"Which is?" shouted Buck over the ship's alarms which had just been triggered by another groaning jolt through every rivet and beam of their small, fast ship.
"The mountain range we are approaching is composed of an ultra-magnetic ore that seems highly attuned to the mineral properties of our ship's metals. I would say that once we came within the field of its influence, the entire mountain became, in effect, a naturally-ocurring tractor beam."
"How do we pull ourselves free?" Wilma asked.
For all his intricate programming, Dr. Theopolis, a highly advanced A.I. with something approaching feelings of loyalty and friendship for the humans aboard this plummeting ship, was still incapable of delivering the next piece of information without a cold edge in his synthesized voice: "We do not. Our inertron drives are insufficient to counteract the magnetic pull of the mountains below, and further taxing them will only result in blowing this ship apart well before we crash planet-side."
With a dry throat, Buddy said, "So, either way we-" But a look from his sister Wilma shut him up quickly. When the ship shuddered again, he moved his grav-locked chair next to Alura's. He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed.
Fighting the ship's controls, Buck didn't at first realize that Wilma had returned to his side. She placed a hand on his arm and he shot her a quick smile. She studied that face - the determined brow dotted with sweat just below the edge of his flight helmet, the keen brown eyes masked behind its visor, the mouth...she lingered on the mouth. Looking on the face of that remarkable man, a man whose boundless capability had made him a legend across the galaxy and across centuries, she was flushed with a love that startled her and a pride beyond that derived from any of her myriad accomplishments that this man was her partner in life. And perhaps death as well.
Every joint and rib of their long-range exploratory cruiser, an X5-Comet barely off the line, squealed and rattled as they broke the cloud cover of the colorful alien world waiting below. The rust-orange peaks of the mountain range were barely a mile beneath and growing closer with each second.
"Hang tight, everybody," Buck announced, "we're going in." And to the shock of his crew, Buck shut the power to all the ship's drives. He gripped the manual sticks for the flaps and air brakes in his gloved hands.
"I love you, Buck," Wilma said.
He flashed a wink at his wife, "Right back at you, sister."
The Comet, much like its namesake, cut a swath through the pink skies on a groundward suicide plunge and aboard all was eerily quiet save the same broadcast message that had brought them so dangerously close to this world in the first place. "Greetings, traveler!" a woman's voice, speaking in perfect English, endlessly repeated, "You are welcomed in peace and friendship by the united peoples of Free Mongo!"