Company Men

Script

INT. COMPANY OUTPOST - LEDGER TENT - DAY

Canvas walls sweat in the Bengal heat. Ink blots. A crate of POWDER KEGS sits OPEN—half-empty. CAPT. SILAS CROWE watches as a COMPANY CLERK weighs a keg like it’s sugar.

ASHA MUKHERJEE stands between them, translating—calm, precise.

CLERK (MR. PELL)
(reading from a ledger)
“Delivered: twenty maunds. Expended in action: nineteen. Remaining: one.”

ASHA
(to Crowe, in English)
He says you have one maund left.

CROWE
We fired three rounds yesterday. Three. Not nineteen.

Pell taps the ledger with a stained finger.

PELL
(smiling thinly)
Then you must have been robbed, Captain.

ASHA
(to Crowe)
He says theft. He wants you to say theft.

Crowe looks at the OPEN crate. The kegs are marked with COMPANY SEALS—unbroken. No prying. No mess. Just... absence.

CROWE
If it’s theft, it’s his depot.

PELL
It’s your command.

Asha’s eyes flick to the ledger margins—tiny marks beside the numbers, like a code.

ASHA
(quietly, to Crowe)
It isn’t theft. It’s arithmetic.

CROWE
Arithmetic doesn’t carry kegs out of a tent.

ASHA
No. Paper does.

She nods to the ledger.

ASHA (CONT’D)
If the book says you fired nineteen, then nineteen can be purchased again. Same powder. Paid twice. Vanishes once.

Crowe’s jaw tightens. The Clerk watches them—too attentive.

PELL
Captain Crowe. The Company requires a signed statement. “Powder missing by native pilferage.” Very common.

Asha’s voice cools—still polite, but edged.

ASHA
(to Pell, in Bengali)
He will not sign a lie to make your sums pretty.

Pell’s smile stiffens.

PELL
In English, Miss Mukherjee.

ASHA
(to Pell, in English)
Captain Crowe requests an audit of your depot records.

A beat. Pell recovers.

PELL
Audits are for Calcutta. Out here we have wars, Captain. Wars require... confidence.

CROWE
Confidence is what men have before they’re buried.

Crowe closes the crate. Hard.

CROWE (CONT’D)
No statement. Not today.

He strides out. Asha follows—fast, low.

ASHA
Captain—if you accuse them, they w