That's a reference to the last book of the Cold Equations trilogy, where there was a Machine that was eating stars (not a spoiler, it appears on, like, page 2).
They do move away from the politics a bit more once you get past The Fall. If you're going to be reading them anyway, I'd recommend trying to read them in order if possible. You don't have to, but you get a lot more out of them if you follow the order they came out.
Thanks for the comments! Kolb was an all-new character for this story. He's named after director Winrich Kolbe. If I recall correctly, she briefly reprises her role of bartender on the Enterprise-E, but she leaves a few years before this story takes place. I must have missed those comments back in 2013! There's nothing odd there, bfollowell has it right. Unable to live with the loss of his family, Kolb from the "present" travels back to 2381 to die with them on Deneva during the Borg attack - but the 2381 version of him is still out there at that point in history and still suffers through the loss...ultimately leading to the events that take place in the novella and him traveling back to die in 2381. Events don't change.