Mombasa

Mombasa was a large coastal megacity located in the Earth nation of Kenya, part of the East African Protectorate. Originally established around 900 A.D., it was one of the longest, continuously-inhabited cities in East Africa and easily the largest by population until the Covenant invasion of Earth in 2552. At the peak of human residency on Earth, Mombasa boasted a population of over 120 million people across multiple municipalities including Mombasa Island. The city was depopulated in the wake of the initial Covenant assault and glassed during the unearthing of the Kenyan Excession. Since the conflict's resolution, the United Nations Space Command established a massive exclusion zone around the portal site, including Mombasa, leading to the city becoming abandoned and falling into disrepair.

Mombasa was a major port city, originally defined by an industry of tourism and maritime commerce. Heavily damaged during the late-21st and 22nd-century conflicts and rebuilt through the 23rd and 24th centuries, Mombasa became the undisputed global trade hub eventually hosting the first commercial space tether on Earth. The city was often split denominally between the financial center, "New Mombasa," and the surrounding municipalities, known collectively as "Old Mombasa." In present times, the single populated fixture of Mombasa is the Mombasa Annex, a large military security installation established over the former Mombasa Tether site.

Geography
Mombasa has historically centered on Mombasa Island, at the mouth of two shallow bays and the Indian Ocean. The northern bay is split into Mombasa Harbor and Tudor Creek; the southern bay is similarly split into Port Kilindini and Port Reitz. During the period of rapid climate change at the turn of the second A.D. millennium, sea levels worldwide increased by unprecedented increments and complex coastal management systems were eventually put in place. The bays expanded, however, extending further inland by almost four miles and required further earthworks and seawalls to retain the coastline's general shape. Nonetheless, Mombasa and the surrounding land continue to be characterized as relatively flat, especially after nearby hills were excavated as part of city reconstruction efforts.

To the north and west of Mombasa, both outside and within city limits, a series of artificial lakes and canals snaked their way up to Voi and then further north towards Nairobi. Part of several major public works initiatives beginning in the mid-21st century, subsequent programs widened existing rivers and constructed new lakes to expand a growing network of irrigation and commercial corridors. The expansions were first motivated by the threat of encroaching desertification by the Sahara Deseret to the north, however, the rise of overpopulation on the African continent presented further issues including starvation and lack of available drinking water. Until 2552 and the excavation of the Kenyan Excession, the series of lakes, rivers, and canals extended from the Port Reitz and Tudor Creek towards the northwest and Voi. From Voi, the waterways spidered off in different directions, some north towards Nairobi and others west toward Lake Victoria and around Mount Kilimanjaro. To the west, the Mombasa urban area gradually dissolves into irregular settlements and miscellaneous industrial warehouses and facilities. Great swaths of land incorporated into Mombasa County transitioned between urban and agricultural development over the centuries to fulfill the needs of the varying scale in the local population and later the Covenant War effort. Much of these many decades-long transitions came at the cost of established wildlife preserves.

Due to a nuclear attack in the city's middling history, much of the contemporary layout differs from developments a century before. The western, inland municipality of Magongo was at the attack's epicenter, eventually being radioactively treated and then partly flattened to buildup the flooded Mombasa Island and Likoni. Much of Magongo became unstable ground after, compromised by salt marsh formation and erosion of the undersea bedrock. While soil has been revitalized to a fertile state, the geological contents beneath Mombasa are mostly granite and basalt proving very stable to build upon. However, centuries-old fissures formed there would eventually give way to revealing the hidden Portal megastructure during the Covenant military's excavation of the region. With the portal site exposed, Magongo and other western municipalities have disappeared. Much of the city's residential areas were melted away or swallowed by encroaching water when the Covenant-built earthworks gave way to the Indian Ocean, partially-filling the crater. In the time after the Covenant War, UNSC-sponsored engineering megacorporations and military engineers have worked to build further earthwork projects in hopes of draining the Portal basin of saltwater.

Contemporary Mombasa Island is defined by sharp, mile-high skyscrapers rising from within the confines of slanted sea walls. The large coral extents that originally formed Mombasa Island and ran along the coastlines have long since dried out from increased ocean traffic while relocation projects established more vibrant, artificial reefs and fisheries further out to sea. After the construction of the Mombasa Tether in Mombasa Harbor, further construction developments along Mombasa Island's southern waterfront and north Mombasa waterfront provide compensatory protection in the event of a substantial disaster, particularly storm flooding or the possible collapse of the space elevator. These developments are referred to as numeric sectors and covered by encompassing retainer walls. Access between these enclosed segments is managed through extensive security locks apparatuses, potentially isolating the mini-districts from one another in event of an emergency.

The epicenter of the city was dominated by what was commonly known as the Mombasa Arcoplex, an elevated superstructure originally built as an arcology project in the 2300s — one of many grandiose development projects as the newly-built tether brought prosperity to the city. Fueled by the fervor of development and big capital investments, older construction was mercilessly torn down with the boom that followed the building of the space elevator. Around this time, the now rebuilt city center on Mombasa Island was rebranded as "New Mombasa". Since then, the arcoplex was expanded several times with both the construction of new skyscrapers on top of it along with considerable internal refurbishment to accommodate the city's growth, blending it more seamlessly into the neighboring districts than the structure's original designers intended. While virtually all of New Mombasa's construction is from the 24th century or since, older structures can still be found underwater in the areas that the new seawall failed to cover.

Beyond New Mombasa, the city's architecture was far more eclectic. The rapid urbanization (often unplanned, informal and peripheral) that characterized East Africa throughout the 21st and 22nd centuries caused the city to grow massively beyond its original boundaries. Much of the core construction of Old Mombasa originates from that era, though periodic development waves since saw some of the older districts torn down and replaced by newer construction, especially closer to New Mombasa. Along the coast to the south, wind farms constructed in the 21st century were since left to rust after cheap fusion power became commonplace and repairing the old wind wheels became too costly. Some of these would be demolished to make way for Mombasa's expanding urban sprawl, though many still remain in less trafficked areas, now dilapidated and rusting. Mombasa is home to spaceports located to the west and north of Mombasa Island. This is to provide some clearing between the tether and high-energy launches. There are also numerous old rocket ports along the Kenyan coastline from the early days of space travel up until the 23rd century; most of the old platforms that have not been repurposed or demolished are now part of the industrial wastes that surround the metropolis. Notable still-active spaceports include ones in Mtwapa and Kilifi to the north and Kinondo to the south.

The surviving seaside municipalities are covered in mixed urban sprawl, featuring architecture from several eras and of varying construction quality. While abandoned, plasma bombardment failed to destroy much of these residential and harbor areas, leaving them as a stark, though partially-submerged, reminder of what once existed in Old Mombasa. The large toppled skyscrapers of inland Mombasa now match the color and disrepair of even Old Mombasa's massive industrial park in the north, long since abandoned with a mass exodus to extrasolar colonies two centuries earlier. Only the seaside municipalities and Mombasa Island remain relatively unscathed, a testament to the city's robust engineering works. During the Battle of Earth, the Covenant assault carrier Solemn Penance escaped the city through a Slipspace portal, compromising the Mombasa Tether, eventually collapsing. The skeletal remains of the Mombasa Tether stretch hundreds of miles inland after security protocols failed to control the tether's descent. Still, the Mombasa Tether base remains occupied by a token UNSC security detachment, serving as a military cargo port, depot, and monitoring installation for the surrounding East African Exclusion Zone. Much of the land and ocean in and around Mombasa are covered in radioactive, molten dust left by the use of glassing beams. Due to extensive ecological damage born from the Covenant invasion, Mombasa and the surrounding East African Exclusion Zone is often dubbed the "Kenyan Badlands."

Pre-Spaceflight
Mombasa began as a Swahili settlement on Mombasa Island known as "Kongowea" in ancient times, founded in legend by the pre-Islamic queen Mwana Mkisi and her people, the "Thenashara Tafia," or Twelve Nations. Whereas the Islamic ruler preceding Mkisi's dynasty, Shehe Mvita supposedly established the first permanent stone mosque on Mombasa Island. In contemporary times, the descendants of the original settlers continue to recount their ancient history and remain, keepers of the local Swahili traditions, even as cultures have changed from globalization and age.

Much of Mombasa's early written history rather began with the arrival of explorers and scholars from Eurasia and North Africa through the 12th century. Mombasa historians based on these early recordings established that the settlement was likely founded somewhere around 900 A.D. and taught in the local school system as such; records also showed evidence of ancient Swahili stonecutting techniques and architecture with some parts of contemporary Mombasa built to reflect the lineage in spirit. As an important trading port in the ancient world, Mombasa was recognized as a place to trade spices, gold, and ivory among other sought-after commodities coming from inland, and from China and India by sea. During the pre-modern era, the important Indian Ocean trade network diversified Mombasa's specialties to also include millet, sesamum, and coconuts.

Two years after its discovery by Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama, the port city was sacked by a Portuguese fleet, becoming a vassal to the growing Portuguese Empire. Mombasa was subsequently liberated by local Islamic and African states only to be recaptured on several occasions. The Portuguese dominated the East African coastline for a little over two centuries, maintaining a presence in Kenya from 1498 to 1730. Mombasa eventually came into the possession of the Sultanate of Oman from 1698 to 1826 after forcing out the Portuguese and only returning to their claim briefly from 1728 to 1729. During the reign of the Omani, a slave economy arose in Mombasa though the city's importance to the overall global African slave trade remains disputed by historians. The city was later placed under the control of the British East African Company in 1887, incorporated into British administration in 1895, becoming the capital of the British East Africa Protectorate and the sea terminal for the Uganda Railway. An influx of workers from British India were brought into Mombasa at the time to work on British modernization projects. During its time as a British colony, Mombasa was designated as the capital of the Kenyan Protectorate before being moved to Nairobi after health concerns were brought to London administrators regarding the town's locale potentially cultivating a variety of swamp-born diseases. The capital was then moved to Nairobi, later becoming the official capital of Kenya upon release from British colonial rule in 1963 and formally became the Republic of Kenya in December 1964.

Republic of Kenya
During the Cold War between the Soviet Union and United States of America, Kenya's government sought alignment with Soviet Union-style socialist republics that came to define their behavior for the later part of the twentieth century. Starting out as the Kenyan African Union (KAU) political action movement, the new Kenyan independent government rebranded as the Kenyan African National Union (KANU) party following British retreat. Under indigenous rule, the new Kenyan nation saw many ups and downs including forced resource allocation and a number of purported violent acts by military and tribal forces. Into the 1970s and the passing of the KANU leader Jomo Kenyatta in 1978, the Kenyan republic took a more West-leaning stance and was pressured by international observers to adopt a multi-party governmental system. With Tanzania and Uganda, Kenya formed a loose trade union called the East African Community that would one day become the backbone for the East African Federation, which would form the core of the Unified Earth Government's East African Protectorate in later centuries. By 1993, the Kenyan republic agreed to recommended economic reforms by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and Mombasa became a key refueling and shipping station along the Indian Ocean trade routes.

Into the twenty-first century, Kenya was a relative economic power on the African continent and among the fastest growing economies in the region. However, the shifting tides of global politics renewed the African continent including Kenya as a battleground between dueling global superpowers. With the unprecedented rise of the People's Republic of China, the renewed superpower began to flex its muscles through infrastructure development and investments in developing nations, Kenya among them. Chinese corporations funded a modern railway between Mombasa and Nairobi, replacing aging British-funded infrastructure and connecting the nation to the sub-Saharan interior. However, as Chinese investments advanced worldwide and gave rise to debt-trap diplomacy, the Kenyan republic feared a Chinese indebtment as the Mombasa port proved very lucrative to the growing Chinese economic alliances.

African launch capital
While Kenya succeeded in tempering Chinese investments compared to other debt-trap targets, Kenya's careful relationship with China would continue. In Mombasa, Chinese construction companies would go on to fund the city's first major canal project and separate Mombasa Island from the mainland for good. Chinese shipping companies would come to make up a majority portion of available Mombasa dock space. For a brief period, Mombasa even hosted a pseudo-Chinese naval base though the outpost was never officially designated or incorporated but emphasized the port's strategic importance in a new age of military diplomacy.

With the successful privatization of space travel and the advent of Golden Age of Space Colonization in the mid-twenty-first century, the Kenyan republic made a competitive bid to host new corporate and foreign national space programs out of Mombasa airspace. Due to advantageous equatorial geography along the Indian Ocean, the city proved a reliable stepping stone for cheap rocket launches without heavy regulation, and a bustling launch port was built several kilometers north of the city along with artificial launch platforms further out in the ocean. The Mombasa spaceport's lax regulations and status as a special economic zone made it highly attractive to foreign operators from across Europe and the Middle East, and Kenya grew tremendously wealthy.

Mombasa's new role as the Kenyan finance and space hub came at just the right time as the African population boom arrived. Nairobi's population skyrocketed into the tens of millions, trailing just behind the neighboring Tanzanian capital Dar es-Salaam. A massive population marred by mass starvation and sickness, new money generated by emerging industries promised Kenya would be at the center of an upcoming African century and mitigate growing pains other African republics suffered through during the Great African Recession. However, the population boom also generated greater upset between neighbors. The Kenyan republic's first big scuffle came with its neighbor and old ally, Tanzania, as both countries grew rich off sea trade and the space industry. Mombasa became the official home to the government-backed Kenyan Space Corporation (KSC) in 2061 in what became the East African Space Race, a decades-long cold war over the local space-based economic sphere that expanded to include more than a few border disputes and incidents at sea. However, thanks in part to Chinese investments, Mombasa overtook Dar es Salaam as the East African space hub into 2100.

The heightening of tensions between the Western powers and China in the late 21st and early 22nd centuries led to the end of Kenya's amiable relations with China. Even though Chinese companies had invested heavily in Kenyan infrastructure over the preceding decades, the Mombasa launch port was mainly used by European countries. Kenya's status as the African launch capital had given it political clout and wealth, along with making the country much less reliant on foreign capital than it had once been. The Kenyan government put this clout to use as entered an alliance with the European Union, which was increasingly concerned about the Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean potentially blocking European access to the strategically crucial Kenyan spaceports. To ensure continuing stability in the region as tensions mounted, Kenya also agreed to host NATO military bases.

Following the NATO-China war of the 2110s, Kenya and several of the former nation-states of the East African Community consolidated into the East African Federation, a project pushed by Kenya for some time by that point. By this time, Mombasa was no longer acting as a hub for foreign space programs but also local ones as the East African nations, which were increasingly building up a space presence of their own.