Telamon (planet)

Telamon, officially known by its discovery number FT957, was a Terran colony located in the Telamon System. It was a member of the Union of Border Worlds.

Telamon still maintains its discovery number due to its remoteness on the Border Worlds frontier, yet was still viewed as an equal to any other planet in the Union. It is a barren, rocky world, as viewed from orbit.

Genocide

Telamon was attacked by unknown assailants during the Border Worlds Conflict of 2673. A large flight of unmarked ships, unknown to either the Confederation or the Union, unleashed a series of biological weapons into the planet's atmosphere. One of the colonists was able to send a distress signal to the BWS Intrepid, which was the closest vessel to the system, stating that unknown ships were attacking and lots of people were dying, and requested immediate assistance. Intrepid commander Colonel Christopher Blair escorted a squad of marines led by Lieutenant Colonel John Dekker to Telamon to investigate the attack. Blair flew a captured F-107 Lance to the planet's surface.

Blair and the marines arrived at the colony's landing strip to find that it was totally intact. However, a group of terrified survivors almost gunned them down when they saw that Blair was flying a Lance, the same type of fighter that attacked the planet. Blair convinced them that they were friendly, and entered a medical tent to talk to the survivors. He learned from one of the doctors that the attackers deployed a biological weapon into the atmosphere that consisted of canisters containing millions of nanobots. These nanobots appeared to be programmed to compare one's genetic code to a code that was pre-registered into the nanobots. They looked for differences between the preferred code and the victim's code. If the victim's characteristics, such as their levels of body fat or muscle mass did not match the preferred code, the nanobots attacked the victim's RNA, stopping the replication body cells. This in turned caused the victim to die a slow death that left their bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Only those whose DNA matched the nanobots' code were spared.

By the time Blair had arrived, an estimated 90% of the population had been exterminated, and Telamon was considered a total loss. The Union would have no choice but to evacuate the survivors. Blair and his strike team then returned to the Intrepid, where they followed a lead that would ultimately help them track down the attackers responsible for the genocide.