I looked up online - the way I'm supposed to start the quest is by going to the Lacaille system and talking to a Drenkard ship orbiting a planet with a mu'kay colony

...only, I got there and there's no drenkard ship - and the colony has no convo options refering to said ship. Thus, i can't start that questline at all.

Please advice.

EDIT - I found the solution: Apparently you have to trigger the quest by talking to the Mu'kay on their homeworld... but you have to find the right convo to poke at to make that happen. That was in no way intuitive. This quest should ideally be possible to start simply by flying into the lacaille system and seeing things happen.