The actual storyline develops after a significant amount of in-game time, and is actually kinda easy to miss the initial two hooks if you click through things too quick. Basically, a planet gets nuked, and a while after _that_, somebody approaches you once you end up in a certain area of the map for a little while.

(And that's before you discover [censored] and [censored] and the whole [censored] storyline that happens after the “main”/initial plot ends)