Starfield talk:Shadows in Neon
From Starfield Wiki
There is a possibility of locking yourself out of this quest and the whole Freestar Rangers questline by doing the Ebbside Strikers side-quests first before doing this quest.
In the Ebbside Strikers quest to clear out three groups of Disciples, there is a Syndicate Gangster NPC that spawns near one of the groups. Initiating combat will cause this NPC to aggro and players are highly likely to kill this NPC as a result. This NPC is supposed to give the player a keycard when looted however if Shadows in Neon has not started he will not have the keycard and killing him earlier will cause the keycard to not spawn. Force starting this quest using console commands does not work.
Credit to u/sc957 on Reddit for the testing of this.