Kimanjo City
"Kimanjo City, now a metropolis of twelve million, was once but the bones of a spaceship, broken against the eddy of a small, nondescript planet, regularly swept clean of life by X-Rays."
Kimanjo is the first human iceberg city, with a subterranean to exposed ratio of 54:1. Every new building for the first decade of its existence was outbuilt by cutting a new hatch through the hull, then excavating the nearby soil to create space with exoframe-class equipment or actual exoframes.
Reaching fourteen levels deep over a recently-defined perimeter of 4258km sq, many are surprised that it. is not an inverted pyramid either. Due to soil density differences, the widest layers are the fourth, fifth and sixth layers from the surface, with the sixth being used to define the aforementioned perimeter. The city bylaws direct any later growth to first match all the other layers to the sixth's actual footprint before further expansion is authorized. This 'subterranean footprint' extends above the city to the stratosphere of the planet as 'Kimanjo Hallowed Airspace', and is defended by the planetary militia, specifically the first-through-fourth Kimanjo Hearth Guards, first being mechanized infantry, with gunship reinforcement, second being exoframe-reinforced, third and fourth are aerospace fast movers, unreinforced, on paper. But the home fleet flagship, the ESS Nyota Wyse, is never more than two hours away at full burn, by standing order of the Hierarch of the Terran Meritocracy. Residents are content, privileged. Apart from the radiation and the need to stay underground for so much of their time, plenty surrounds them, hydroponics and funghi supply a rich, varied diet to those that can afford it, and a minimal, mandated supply for all required nutrients for everyone.
This is pretty cool! But I am a little confused as to how this city came to be: if the space hulk was regularly swept clean of life by the cosmic radiation, who were the first to see it and decide to try and build there? Did somehow restart the ship's radiation shielding protocols? I love the idea though, of this wreck signifying the tip of the iceberg of a whole city. Almost like when you lift up a rock and you see the colonies of bugs underneath. Good stuff!
It has shielding as long as it's engines are running, that the crash damages them is something I need to write more clearly it seems. Basically it was all fine until the crew suffered so much casualties.