November, 1942

Captain Joe Tormolen lay back on his cot. He desperately wanted and needed to sleep, but it would not come.

Tormolen had been able to sleep on pretty much any ship he'd been on, in any climate. It was almost a matter of pride to him. But this tiny cot, in this Quonset hut, on the island of New Caledonia - this was worse than any ship he'd ever sailed aboard. He had grown used to sleeping aboard a ship - the slow rocking, the quiet rattle of the engines, the muffled tramping of countless feet, all the little things that served as a reminder to his subconscious that he was surrounded by steel, stubbornly bobbing atop the seas.

He found himself missing the Argonne. The sub tender had been an utterly inadequate flagship for Admiral Halsey when he first took command of the theatre. She was cramped, slow, and woefully un-air-conditioned, but at least she was a ship. Tormolen had not grumbled when Halsey announced he and his staff were going ashore, but he wished he had.

Tormolen found himself thinking back to his first cruise at sea. A freshly-minted ensign, he had been assigned to the battleship Arkansas. He'd been walking around the ship late one night when he stumbled across an illicit poker game.

His first instinct had been to break up the game, but he'd let the chief who seemed to be running it persuade him to let it go. Instead, Tormolen had watched, fascinated - he'd never played poker, and the intensity of the players had him quickly enthralled.

The game eventually came down to two young seamen, and the pots kept growing. In the final hand, there was more cash piled on the table than Tormolen had ever seen in one place. Just as the sailors were about to settle that final pot, however, Tormolen's lieutenant came looking for his misplaced ensign. The lieutenant confiscated the pot and the cards, blistered the ears of the chiefs who had been standing around encouraging the young players, and led Tormolen straight to the captain's quarters.

The captain had not been pleased to be presented with the news, and immediately ordered Tormolen back to his quarters - with orders to stay there until he was summoned. Joe closed the door behind him, leaving the two officers to quietly discuss the matter.

The next afternoon, that same lieutenant had showed up at Tormolen's quarters and escorted him back to the captain's quarters.

"Mr. Tormolen, would you care to explain what you were doing at that poker game last night?"

"Sir, I discovered it underway while walking the ship, and should have put a stop to it immediately. But I let myself be persuaded that it was harmless, and instead watched it."

The captain humphed. "Well, at least you aren't dumb enough to lie to me. Tell me, Tormolen, do you play poker?"

"No sir, last night was the first time I even saw a game being played."

"Do you know why gambling is forbidden on Navy ships, and especially on mine?"

"No, sir. I had never thought to question the regulations."

"Let me explain it to you, Mr. Tormolen." The captain took an envelope out of his desk and handed it over. "Count this."

It was the pot from that final hand. Tormolen counted it, as ordered. It was, indeed, far more money than he'd ever seen in one place, let alone held.

"That, Mr. Tormolen, is about four months' pay from each of those two idiots who were in that final hand. If Lieutenant Whedon hadn't broken up that game, one of those men would have lost pretty much every penny he owned."

"Sir, that was their choice. If a man wants to risk…"

"I don't recall asking for your opinion, Mr. Tormolen. As I was saying, one of those men was about to lose every penny he owned. That would have caused a great deal of resentment between two men who one day might need to depend on each other for their very lives. More importantly, it would have driven a wedge between two of my crew, and I can't afford to have two men hating each other when they should be thinking about their duties to this ship.

"I can't keep the men from gambling when they're ashore, but I can keep them from doing so on my ship. And anyone who tries to get around that - even if it means standing by and staring like an idiot while it goes on - will get my shoe up their ass as far as I can kick it."

"Yes, sir."

"Now, Tormolen, do you know what I'm going to do about this whole sorry mess?"

Tormolen saw a court martial in his future. Or, at least, a captain's mast. "No, sir."

"We're going to pretend this never happened. After you leave, the senior chief is going to come in here and take that envelope. After we take 20% of it for the Crew Fund, we're going to split it right down the middle and lock it in the ship's safe. Once we get back to shore, those two sailors in that final hand will be given that money.

"The only reason I'm not taking any official action, Tormolen, is because of you. There is no way I can punish a single one of the players without punishing you even more severely, and I'm not going to put that kind of a black mark on your record on your very first tour at sea."

Tormolen felt himself sag with relief.

"I want you to understand the price of your future, Mr. Tormolen. To preserve that career, I am choosing to not discipline six crewmen who most likely desperately need it. I am letting them off, because there is no way I can come down on them like they deserve without destroying you in the process.

"This doesn't mean that the whole matter is whitewashed, Mr. Tormolen. I'm putting those six men into a single work gang. That gang is going to be getting the nastiest, most disgusting, most back-breaking details I and the senior chief can find. And would you care to speculate what officer is going to be assigned to supervise this gang?"

The following months had been the worst of Tormolen's young life. From holystoning the decks to cleaning the bilges to painting the hull to scouring the heads, he had led the poker party on a tour of the worst places aboard the Arkansas. When he had been transferred of the battleship, he had left with a thorough knowledge of the less-than-glamorous workings of the Arky - and a lifetime loathing of poker.

Then, four months after he left the ship, he heard through the grapevine about a murder aboard the Arkansas. Sickly, he had looked into the story, and it was just as he has feared - one of those two men in that last hand had killed the other. A gambling debt was supposedly involved.

There was no way Tormolen could know if the killing might had been averted, had he shut down the game as soon as he stumbled across it. Maybe, maybe not.

It was that last hand that kept coming to mind. It seemed the perfect metaphor for the fighting going around Guadalcanal. Neither the United States nor Japan had intended to make the Solomon Islands the crucible it had become. Neither nation had expected to pour as many men, planes, and ships into the pot, constantly raising the stakes and sinking more and more and more resources into the fight. The butcher's bill was already far higher than any other battle, and there seemed no end in sight. The determining factor was turning out not to be numbers, or technology, or tactics, but simply a matter of who was willing to shed the most blood.

As of this moment, neither side was even considering folding.