The Posting

A wall of HEAT. The HOOGHLY crawls, brown and swollen. COMPANY FLAGS snap above a dock where MEN unload crates stamped with CROWN MARKS… and ledgers.

CAPT. SILAS CROWE (30s), uniform worn thin at the seams, steps off a riverboat. His boots hit mud like an accusation.

A YOUNG CLERK in crisp linen blocks him with a book bound in cracked leather.

ASHA MUKHERJEE (20s), poised, eyes sharp, stands beside the clerk—translator, witness, judge.

Captain Silas Crowe. Exiled, not executed. Congratulations.

I requested a posting. Not a sermon.

ASHA (translating softly, then in English)

He says you’ll be paid on time if your guns speak on schedule.

Crowe clocks her. Not Company. Not afraid.

And you are?

Asha Mukherjee. I translate what men pretend not to understand.

The clerk flips the ledger open. Columns. Names. Numbers. Death rendered tidy.

Your command: Two six-pounders. One limber. Seven gunners.

Seven?

On paper, twelve.

Crowe’s jaw tightens. He looks past them—toward the interior. A distant thud. Not thunder. A cannon somewhere, somewhere not his.

CLERK (CONT’D)

Your first invoice-able engagement is due within the fortnight.

Invoice-able.

Victories with receipts.

Crowe takes his orders without looking at them.

Show me the guns.

Gladly.

A “gun park” that’s barely a yard: a mud pit with two CANNONS half-sunk, wheels splintered, tarpaulins rotting like skin.

SEVEN MEN in Company rags sit around a pot with nothing in it. They stare at Crowe as if he’s another ration that won’t come.

LT. TOM KESTREL (20s), clean enough to be offensive, steps forward.

Captain. Lieutenant Tom Kestrel. I kept the men from selling the ramrods.

How charitable.

Kestrel gestures at the cannons—embarrassed, defensive.

Powder is short. Shot is short. Food—

—Is a rumor. I see.

A GUNNER coughs, a dry rattle. Another’s hands shake as he tries to roll a cartridge that’s mostly dust.

Crowe walks to the nearest cannon. Runs a finger along the touch hole. Comes away black. Not soot—damp rot.

CROWE (CONT’D)

Who last fired this?

Silence. Kestrel answers too quickly.

No orders to waste powder, sir.

Crowe looks at the men: not lazy—spent. He looks at the cannon: not broken—neglected on purpose.

ASHA steps closer, lowering her voice.

When Company stores go missing, they call it theft. Here, they call it weather.

And you?

I call it arithmetic.

Crowe meets her gaze. A choice forming.

Where’s the clerk?

At the fort. Writing.

Good. Let him write this.

Crowe pulls his own small NOTEBOOK from his coat. A battered thing. He tears a page, hands it to Kestrel.

CROWE (CONT’D)

You will requisition powder, shot, rations, wheelwright labor. Twelve men, not seven. Today.

They’ll deny it.

Then we’ll deny them their numbers.

Kestrel hesitates—caught between obedience and survival.

Sir… the Company doesn’t like captains who ask questions.

Crowe looks over the mud yard toward the river—toward the distant empire that sent him here to disappear.

Then they should’ve sent a quieter man.

He turns to the crew. His voice hardens into command—quiet, lethal.

CROWE (CONT’D)

You. Stand up.

The men rise, slow—like waking dead.

CROWE (CONT’D)

This gun will fire again. Not for their ledger. For the man beside you. Understood?

A beat. Then, one by one, they nod. Not loyalty to the Crown—loyalty to breath.

ASHA watches Crowe like she’s measuring a fuse.

Captain Crowe… in Bengal, paper kills as surely as cannon.

Crowe stares at the cannons sinking into mud, as if he can already see smoke.

Then we learn to read.

HOLD on the cracked cannon barrel—rain begins to patter, soft at first, like distant drums.