The Posting

Script

EXT. HOOGHLY RIVER DOCKS - DAY

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.

CLERK
Captain Silas Crowe. Exiled, not executed. Congratulations.

CROWE
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.

CROWE
And you are?

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

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

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

CROWE
Seven?

CLERK
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.

CROWE
Invoice-able.

ASHA
Victories with receipts.

Crowe takes his orders without looking at them.

CROWE
Show me the guns.

ASHA
Gladly.


EXT. COMPANY GUN PARK, BENGAL FRONTIER - LATE AFTERNOON

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.

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

CROWE
How charitable.

Kestrel gestures at the cannons—embarrassed, defensive.

KESTREL
Powder is short. Shot is short. Food—

CROWE
—Is a rumor. I see.

A GUNNER coughs, a dry