"This cruise didn't begin well and it will not end well", he told Keoke, Heavy and me. His distant mystical look sent shivers up our spines. In the belly of a ship decades old, in the heat and the humidity and the rank stench of filthy men days unwashed, the crew of the ancient USS Topa rot. They do their duty as slaves to the U.S. Navy, the supply lifeline of the fleet that hovers off of the coast of Vietnam in 1969, engaged in a never ending war. But to their commanders, as sailors, they are nothing. And as enlisted men, they are even less. Strangers at first, the men of the USS Topa, a ragtag group from all walks of life, find themselves an ocean away from home, struggling together not against the communists their country is fighting, but against their own officers. Slowly but surely, under the iron fist of the Navy, prejudice, hatred and fear run rampant among the crew. And amidst the long voyage, they are left to wonder if any of them will make it back to the states at all...