Clockwork Souls by Phyllis Irene Radford, Brenda W. Clough

we need, if you will permit me to say
so,” said Dominic. “We need gentlemen for officers.”
    Anthony put on a charming smile. “Then gentlemen you shall
have.”
    Through his influence, as he made acquaintance among Boston’s
polite society, the last few vacancies among the regiment’s officers were
filled. Marie secretly chafed at the ease with which he was accepted in Boston.
She, herself, though a free-born Creole, would never be accorded the same
treatment.
    After the war , she told herself. Such small
indignities were nothing compared with the suffering of the enslaved.

    On the sixteenth of May, the regiment was mustered in as
the 1st Massachusetts Automated Engineers. Marie and Philomène stood near the
governor’s reviewing stand and watched as Anthony, now Lieutenant Colonel
Ramsey, rode by in company with Colonel Malcomb and the other officers. Dominic
was Sergeant-major under Anthony, the highest possible non-commissioned rank.
Mignon, in her guise as Private Smith, marched with the color guard.
    Marie’s heart fluttered for a moment as they passed. Mignon
looked so small, almost frail, amid the larger automata in her company, yet her
eyes showed determination. She would never yield, and she would never again be
owned.
    The officers were in fine trim. The soldiers were a motley
collection even in their new uniforms. Some looked human, others human-like,
and some were nothing like. One, Thwart, had been a smelting machine in a
factory, and was only mobile because of heavy modifications since his escape.
The others were humanoid, though one—Rapp, he was called—had no skin to his
face, so the metal works within were exposed, always in motion. Of necessity,
uniforms for the more unusual recruits had been custom-made, and even so did
not always fit well.
    The regiment was stationed in North Bridgewater, there to
undergo further training. As engineers, their first duty was labor; building
roads and bridges, laying railroad track, and other such dreary work. They
toiled on such projects for a full month, by which time many of the enlisted
automata were becoming impatient.
    “They want their chance to shine,” Anthony said over dinner
in camp. Marie and Philomène, who had both insisted on accompanying the
regiment, were serving as cooks to Anthony, unusual only in that the cooks were
also welcome at the table.
    “They shall have it,” Dominic said. “I have persuaded
Malcomb to request a transfer to the front in Virginia.”
    “Will they have us?” Anthony asked.
    “I believe so. I have been corresponding with a certain
Colonel Pleasants, who has plans for breaching the Rebel works. He thinks we
may be able to help, and has promised to request our assignment to him.”
    Marie’s spine tingled. So the regiment was going to war at
last.
    “We are coming with you,” she said.
    “It will be rougher than this,” Dominic cautioned.
    His words were massively understated.
    When the regiment arrived at the trenches before Petersburg
early in June, they were stunned at the expanse of the earthworks. These went on
for miles, embracing the city in a broad arc of more than twenty miles. Union
troops had made no headway against this defense in the months they had been
there.
    Gazing at the works from the Headquarters hilltop, Marie was
dismayed. Death hung over the place like a dreary fog. She wished she were
anywhere else.
    The regiment had been given a site at the western extreme of
the Union camp. It was damp and somewhat boggy, but they set up their camp with
dogged cheerfulness.
    The neighboring regiment’s camp was aglow with firelight
that evening. The 1st built no fires, automata being in no need of such human
comforts, though at Headquarters there was a fire for the officers. Marie spent
the first evening in camp sitting beside it, wrapped in her shawl, gazing into
the flames as if they could show her a way out.
    Footsteps roused her. She looked up to see a stranger—young
like Anthony, dark-haired