Science fiction generally posits suggestions about what the future might look like, and one of the enduring questions confronted by many SF authors is humanity's warlike, militaristic side. What will tomorrow's army look like? What will humanity do when confronted with potentially hostile aliens, or rebellious colonies strewn across an interstellar confederation of planets? Will it be a more utopian universe, or a dystopian one? Will the future be more of the past, or something different?
In Robert Heinlein's classic novel Starship Troopers, he largely embraced the notion of a human military which operated along the same paradigms as the contemporary version, albeit with a few more toys (indeed, many people are still enamored of the idea of a self-contained "army of one" inside a super-powered suit of armor, as evidenced by the enduring popularity of the Xbox game Halo).
The Starfist series, written by Dan Cragg and David Sherman, walks a similar path. An ongoing exploration of the combat infantry units of the future, it employs a "grunt's eye" view of military activities, complete with heroic marines and moronic commanders. The latest installment, Flashfire, does a pretty good job of describing a futuristic civil war.
The 34th Marine Fleet Initial Strike Team (or FIST) embraces the rough and ready mentality which has long typified the military. In this volume of the series, they face a more conventional threat than the alien Skanks they've dealt with recently. Instead, a confrontation between locals and the military on the planet Ravenette turns deadly and sets off an interstellar incident. Soon, Ravenette has seceded from the Confederation, a move which threatens to force the revelation of classified information about the existence of the Skanks. The seceding planets manage to quickly commandeer the Ravenette garrison, and the Confederation soldiers on the planet soon face the combined might of ten planets. They need help, and they need it fast.
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