Mutiny of the Guns

Script

EXT. BENGAL FLOODPLAIN - DUSK

Monsoon rain hammers a brown, endless sheet of water. Palm tops poke like drowning hands. A HALF-SUNK CART floats by, rope trailing.

CAPT. SILAS CROWE hauls a rope over his shoulder, boots vanishing in mud. LT. TOM KESTREL shoves a wheel free with a curse. ASHA MUKHERJEE balances a leather folio under her shawl, ink already bleeding at the edges.

CROWE
Keep the trail tight. If the river takes a gun, we’ve lost more than iron.

KESTREL
We’ve lost the road. And we’ve lost the timetable. Company wants us back at depot—

CROWE
Company wants its receipts. The prince wants his powder. Only one of them is honest about killing.

ASHA opens the folio: a map sketched over numbers, a stamp half-smeared. She points through rain to a line of DARK WATER moving between reeds.

ASHA
Not road. Canal. They’ll run the shipment where carts can’t follow.

CROWE squints. In the distance: a LOW BOOM, muffled by rain—like thunder with intent.

CROWE
That’s not the sky.

KESTREL
It’s a test-fire?

ASHA
Or a signal. (beat) The shipment moves tonight.

Crowe looks at his men—soaked, hollow-eyed. Then at the water, where the canal disappears into fog.

CROWE
Then we move with it.

He wrenches the rope. The crew drags forward into the flood, swallowed by rain.

CUT TO:


EXT. CANAL BANK / MANGROVE EDGE - NIGHT

A narrow canal, black and fast. Mangroves twist like ribs. Lanterns bob on a BARGE gliding through the rain—CRATES stacked under tarps.

Crowe, Kestrel, Asha crouch in the muck. Two MISFIT GUNNERS flank them, muskets wrapped in cloth. Everyone breathes shallow.

ASHA peers through reeds. Her voice is a thread.

ASHA
Marks on the crates—Company warehouse code. Calcutta.

KESTREL
Then it’s ours. Escort it, log it, and— 

CROWE
And let it arrive.

Asha fishes out a SMALL SLATE, chalk-streaked. On it: a copied cipher—numbers, dots, and a name.

ASHA
Payment trail ends with the same clerk. Again. The one who “lost” our powder.

Crowe’s jaw tightens. He watches