Rapiers and goose quills

the long version

"Nathan Dixon, a mid-career Army officer, discovers just how different the Army that he has dedicated his life to will look in the future when he is assigned the task of investigating a friendly fire incident involving a rogue unmanned ground combat vehicle, or UGV. This is no easy task for an officer that has yet to learn how to deal with the self interests that a project such as the UGV program is capable of creating. In addition to working with the commanding officer of the unit testing the UGVs, a man determined to save his career, and dealing with the civilian contractor charged with seeing that the UGVs his company is building succeeds no matter what, Dixon must not only find out what happened but who, if anyone, was responsible for the sequence of events that caused the incident."--Publisher description.