Taos IV was a planet, the fourth in its system, located in the space of the galaxy's Alpha or Beta Quadrants.
History[]
In 2267, pirate Ben Cannon, captain of the Windjammer, buried a stolen dilithium shipment in a jungle on Taos IV. He was then stranded there by his own men, who also took the map showing the location of the dilithium.
Black Jack Nova, the new captain of the Windjammer, lost half of the map, but was reunited with it in 2268 thanks to USS Enterprise officers James T. Kirk, Spock, Leonard McCoy and Montgomery Scott, who were undercover as a pirates on a mission to retrieve the dilithium. The Windjammer crew landed on Taos IV in a shuttlecraft, just as the pursuing Enterprise beamed down a landing party. The pirates followed the map to the location of the buried dilithium while the Enterprise team encountered Ben Cannon. The pirates failed to find the dilithium, as Cannon had dug it up and brought it to his cave months earlier. Nova died when his shuttlecraft crashed onto the planet in an escape attempt and his crew were arrested. (TOS comic: "The Flight of the Buccaneer")