Shattered Rift

The Shattered Rift warned intruders off with raw grinding violence.

Through the canopy, the calm drift of the outer belt gave way to a churning sea of broken planetary crust. 

Thousands of basalt slabs, iron-veined boulders and razor-edged silicate wedges tumbled across crossing orbital planes, spinning on wild three-axis vectors and smashing into each other at four kilometers per second.

KRAAAACK!

Every impact threw out blinding showers of white-hot sparks and powdered stone, opening and slamming shut narrow corridors of empty space like iron teeth.

Leo sat forward in the throne with his fingers buried deep in the cradles.

The cold needle of the link sent a jolt of liquid blue down his neck, and the pull in the small of his back cinched into a hard knot.

In the tutorial maze he'd dodged dead frozen wreckage. 

Here the graveyard was alive... rolling and crushing itself to pieces all around them.