Leon, the Lieutenant of the USS Hiawatha, one of the greatest science and war vessels in the Delta 4 Quadrant, was orignally meant to be docking the ship at the nearest Starbase, which in this case would have been Ceres Station for an Intel meeting about the latest rumblings surrounding the issue of the Klingons.

However....that didn't go to plan. As they were coming into Delt 5 subspace, a piece of debris hit the ship and caused external damage. He and his rival got into an argument over who should go and fix it in a small repair ship, eventually Captain James got tired of it and sent them both out to fix the damage, much to their dismay.

While they were fixing up the damage, a large piece of debris hit the repair ship and sent it flying, the controls becoming unresponsive due to engine loss. And they ended up drifting too far away from the Hiawatha to even be able to contact through subspace frequencies.

Effectively rendering them both alone, without help.