Sixth Belt

The Sixth Belt was one of the seven wide bands of asteroids that orbited the sun and made up the Oseon system, a part of the Centrality sector in the Slice portion of the Outer Rim Territories. Along with the rest of the Oseon system, the belt was connected by the Falko Run hyperlane to the Arleen system, while the hyperspace route known as the Cadma Conduit linked it to the Erilnar system and the Cadma sector's Dagelin Minor system.

The Sixth Belt contained Oseon 6845, the largest orbital body of the Oseon system. It was an iron-based rock asteroid with a mass of a billion tons and a diameter of seven hundred kilometers that was also classified as a planetoid. The rotation period of Oseon 6845 was artificially shortened by its inhabitants to twenty-five hours in order to help provide them with a familiar sense of day and night.

Once per each local year, every orbital body in the Oseon system, including those in the Sixth Belt, was affected by a phenomenon known as the Flamewind. Caused by the flares of the Oseon sun tearing excited vapor from the closest asteroids, the Flamewind manifested itself as fluorescent and multi-colored bands of ionized gas millions of kilometers long and wide that continuously shifted across the entire spectrum of visible light.

Accompanying the visual display were frequent static discharges between the system's asteroids and a constant barrage of radiation and particles, such as electrons. As a result, navigational, sensor, and life-support equipment of inadequately shielded starships was damaged, electronic communications between the asteroids and with the rest of the galaxy were made impossible, and the perception and behavior of sentient beings who were not appropriately protected was affected.

At some point between 3 BBY and 2 BBY, the sorcerer Rokur Gepta planned to exact vengeance upon the gambler and freighter captain Lando Calrissian. To that end, Gepta arranged for Lob Doluff, the Administrator Senior of the Oseon system, to send a message to Calrissian on the planet Dilonexa XXIII, inviting the gambler to come play the sabacc card game on the Sixth Belt asteroid Oseon 6845. Jumping at the potentially lucrative opportunity, the captain and his copilot, the droid Vuffi Raa, departed the Dilonexa system for the Oseon system.

However, while Calrissian's starship, the Millennium Falcon, was still being refueled on Dilonexa XXIII, one of Gepta's agents planted a pair of bombs on the vessel. The first of the explosives detonated when the starship's hyperdrive was engaged several days before its arrival in the Oseon. The second bomb exploded upon the Falcon reverting from hyperspace to realspace near Oseon 6845, but the vessel emerged relatively unscathed due to the explosive being designed to destroy a ship entering the atmosphere and gravity of a planet as opposed to an airless asteroid. Vuffi Raa subsequently oversaw the Falcons setting down on the surface of Oseon 6845 in what was the inexperienced Calrissian's first starship landing under the droid's piloting tutelage.

On Calrissian's fourth night in the Sixth Belt, the gambler was playing sabacc with Lob Doluff and his associates at the Administrator Senior's Oseon 6845 estate when the former was lured to the asteroid's north polar spaceport with a false alarm about the Millennium Falcon. There, Calrissian was ambushed by Colonel Kenow, a member of the Renatasian Confederation—a group devoted to exacting vengeance upon Vuffi Raa, whom it wrongfully held responsible for the subjugation of the Renatasia system by the Galactic Empire. Acting in self-defense, Calrissian killed Kenow with his stingbeam pistol, and, after informing Doluff of the incident, the gambler was placed under arrest.

A few hours after Calrissian's arrest, while the gambler was still incarcerated in a local prison cell, the Flamewind phenomenon commenced in the Oseon system. By that time, Rokur Gepta had arrived at Oseon 6845 on his personal cruiser, the Wennis, in pursuit of the Millennium Falcon. Gepta arranged for Imperial authorities to order the arrest of Bohhuah Mutdah, a retired trillionaire industrialist and the wealthiest individual in the Oseon system, though making it appear as if Mutdah's business rivals were having him arrested to plot his downfall.

To that end, the Imperial undercover narcotics agent Waywa Fybot was dispatched to the Oseon system to make the arrest. As an added insurance, Doluff was pressured to ensure that the arrest went through. Gepta himself spent the time that followed Calrissian's arrest meditating on Oseon 6845, while the Wennis was stationed some distance away with its crew performing a series of drill exercises. Also stationed at that time in the asteroid's shadow, at a distance of several thousand kilometers from it, was the squadron of starfighters constituting the Renatasian Confederation.

Doluff eventually ordered Calrissian to be brought to his office. The Administrator Senior explained to the gambler that he was charged with carrying a lethal weapon, which was a capital offense in the Oseon system. However, the traditional Oseoni sentence, death by exposure to the vacuum of interplanetary space, would be exchanged for Calrissian being forced to participate in a sting operation. The gambler was to transport Fybot and Oseon Peacekeeper Captain Bassi Vobah to Oseon 5792, Mutdah's private asteroid in the Fifth Belt of the system—a trip made extremely hazardous by to the ongoing Flamewind. At his destination, Calrissian would pose as a courier delivering Mutdah his scheduled supply of the illegal lesai drug, allowing the two law enforcement officers to arrest the trillionaire.

Shortly thereafter, Calrissian's freighter left Oseon 6845. Alerted by a missile sent as a signal by the first officer of the Wennis, who was colluding with the Renatasian Confederation, the squadron also departed the asteroid in pursuit of Calrissian's vessel. Eventually, Gepta, too, left Oseon 6845 aboard his personal starfighter, leaving his cruiser behind and instructing it to rendezvous with him in the Tund system after the Flamewind had passed. Gepta traveled to Oseon 5792, where he had Mutdah murdered and then assumed his appearance in order to entrap Calrissian.

Since the navigational equipment of the Millennium Falcon was disabled by the Flamewind, Calrissian and Vuffi Raa had to rely on the ship following a pre-programmed course to Oseon 5792, a journey that would have only taken slightly more than two hours at any other time of the year. Due to the effects of the Flamewind, however, the Falcons instrument readouts indicated that the vessel was, in order, traveling along a figure eight–shaped trajectory while spinning like a top; flying in a spiral and then in right triangles; and finally traveling along a path that corresponded to a line on the inside of a Klein bottle. Accompanying the disorienting sensor readouts were the Flamewind's changing displays of color and phases of different radiation fluxes that all affected the Falcons crew and passengers.

When the Flamewind shifted to a red hue, the Renatasian Confederation caught up with the Falcon and attacked it. Detaching their two dozen starfighters from the hyperdrive engine of a Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser that the squadron was collectively using for faster-than-light travel, the Renatasians opened fire on the Falcon, which forced Calrissian to disengage the computer-controlled pre-programmed flight toward Oseon 5792 in order to perform evasive maneuvers.

Calrissian managed to destroy two of the attacking craft, but another fighter then rammed the Falcons bottom hull, and the freighter's captain realized he could not prevail in the engagement. Orienting the vessel parallel to the ecliptic of the Oseon system, Calrissian fully engaged the ship's sublight drives and outraced the squadron of attackers.

As the Falcon left the Sixth Belt and entered the gap between it and the Fifth Belt, the intensity of the Flamewind's visual displays momentarily decreased, although Calrissian—a relatively inexperienced pilot and navigator—was initially not sure whether the ship was, in fact, traveling inward or outward from the Sixth Belt. The Falcon then briefly hid in a small cluster of asteroids that followed its own course through the gap before continuing its journey toward Oseon 5792. There, Calrissian was later forced to briefly re-experience a distorted memory of the skirmish against the Renatasian fighters in the Sixth Belt when Gepta used the illusion-casting technique known as torture by chagrin on him.

The government of the Oseon system, the Oseon Administration, was based on the Sixth Belt asteroid Oseon 6845. It was headed by the Administrator Senior and employed the Oseon Peacekeepers as a local police force. The Administration enforced the laws of the star system, such as the one forbidding the carrying of a lethal weapon, for which the sentence upon conviction was death by exposure to the vacuum of space.

The entire Oseon system was inhabited by individuals of notable wealth. With that in mind, most of the establishments on Oseon 6845 were geared toward catering to affluent locals as well as attracting tourists from at least a million other systems of the wider galaxy. It was sometimes said that some among the pedestrians walking along the asteroid's throughway known as the Esplanade were the wealthiest individuals in the known universe.

Among the patrons of Oseon 6845's locales were Galactic Basic Standard–speaking Humans as well as members of a variety of other humanoid and nonhuman species. Certain labels in public locations on Oseon 6845 were written in six languages.

The surface of the Sixth Belt asteroid Oseon 6845 was entirely covered by nightclubs and resorts, and its interior was also filled with luxurious hotels, night entertainment venues, and palace-like residences. In addition, the Esplanade, a kilometers-long, domed pedestrian thoroughfare that constituted the center of a small city, stretched around Oseon 6845's equator.

The Sixth Belt was introduced in Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon, the 1983 second entry in The Lando Calrissian Adventures trilogy of novels by L. Neil Smith. On the original cover of the novel, an illustration by William Schmidt depicted several buildings on the Sixth Belt asteroid Oseon 6845.

"Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, How I Wonder Where We Are," a 1990 roleplaying game source article published in Voyages SF 13, placed the Oseon system, and therefore the Sixth Belt, in the Zebitrope sector. Since that article was released outside of the Lucas Licensing process, its canonicity within the Star Wars Legends continuity was never confirmed. The 2009 reference book The Essential Atlas subsequently overrode the Voyages SF 13 placement by establishing that the Oseon system was situated in grid square T-8 as part of the Centrality.

• Star Wars Encyclopedia
• The Essential Chronology
• "A Campaign Guide to the Centrality" — Star Wars Gamer 5
• The New Essential Chronology
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, Vol. II
• "Authors of the Expanded Universe: L. Neil Smith" — Star Wars Insider 145