Picard found his feet frozen in place as he watched with renewed horror, a pair of satisfied smiles creep across the lips of both the queen, and the Feeonix. Two drones moved on him then, each grabbing an arm with all the delicacy of a pair of drunken Nausicans. He continued to stare at his ambassador, and her android protector with total disbelief as the drones forced him towards the view screen. They shoved him back against the hard rear of a pod, and one held the saw-like implement that was it's arm, against his throat.
"I am bringing the external sensors online," Data informed the queen once he'd moved to the main console, his fingers dancing across the controls as he readied the ship's arsenal.
Naseema remained beside the queen, and the two of them stood in front of Picard, closely watching for his reaction to their next move, the twisted smiles still present on their faces.
"Quantum torpedoes locked," was Data's next update, and Picard could barely bring himself to look at the monitor, as the computer locked onto the tiny, primitive vessel that was humanity's future.
"Destroy them!" the queen commanded, and Picard held his breath as he watched Data raise his hand, and then with one finger, hit the button that would annihilate mankind as if he were simply ordering lunch.
The queen tilted her chin up, and narrowed her eyes at Picard as they watched the torpedoes barrel towards their target. Each one capable of inflicting crippling damage to a ship equal in size to the Enterprise. Data had fired three of them, total overkill for a ship as miniscule as the Pheonix. The tiny ship would be obliterated. "Watch your future's end," she sneered, holding herself high with the victorious poise of a spoiled deity about to crush an entire civilization under it's foot.
Picard tried to shut his eyes, but found he couldn't look away. His breath left him, and he was sure his heart had stopped. The brilliant blue lights that were the quantum torpedoes crossed the distance between the two ships in what seemed like slow motion. In the next instant, Picard was sure he witnessed a miracle. The three glowing lights whizzed right past the tail end of the Pheonix, and the tiny ship continued the flight that would bring mankind out of the dark ages. His faith came rushing back to him as he saw both the smile flash across Naseema's face, and the look of acrimony that flooded the queen's. Her head snapped around, and he followed her eyes straight to Data's, which were now filled with burning contempt, directed solely at the malignant bitch who thought she could break him.
"Data!" she roared, her fury roiling up to such an explosive pinnacle, Picard was sure she would spew fire with the android's name.
Data stared her down, his own anger surging up to match hers in strength and ferocity. "Resistence is futile!" he snarled back at her from where he now stood, directly beside the warp core's right plasma coolant tank. Without even a micro-second of hesitation, he twisted his body, and violently swung his arm into the casing, completely decimating it. The tank erupted with volcanic brutality, and the gas exited it's chamber with such force, it blasted Data right off his feet, and completely enveloped him as it swept him backwards until Picard lost sight of him.
The fumes of the toxic coolant neutralized the last of the queen's hold on Naseema, and the oily black signature of the mind-controlling drug vaporized from her eyes, returning them to the familiar deep blue. The Feeonix flew into furious action, and grabbed a hold of the saw-armed Borg, shoving it's implement back into it's own face before using her foot to heave it into the oblivion of the plasma coolant swirling below them. She met Picard's astounded gaze, and motioned for him to scale up the Borg pod. "We must move quickly now, sir," she told him, and flashed him a quick smile before she positioned herself between him and the queen. The queen meanwhile, was staring with growing horror at the rising gas river surging along the floor. She spun around to face the Feeonix, who met her with collected cool. "I am not stupid, highness," Naseema said pointedly. "I am fully aware one of your goals was to kill me."
"That is now my only goal," the queen hissed back, lungeing at her. Naseema deftly avoided her grasp, and body checked her aside before scrambling up the Borg pod behind Picard. He grabbed one of the writhing, artificial tentacles descending from the ceiling, with one hand, and pulled Naseema up with him using his other. She held onto his shoulders as he tried to maneouver them to the safety of the second-level catwalk. The queen, still seething, ascended the pod after them, and snaked her long fingers around Picard's leg. He tightened his grip on the tube with a groan as the extra weight dragged them down. Naseema let herself slide down Picard's torso, and swung her foot at the queen in an attempt to dislodge her. The queen, now almost blind with rage, grabbed the Feeonix instead, deciding that if she would die, she would take with her this ridiculous creature who had succeeded, where she had not, to secure the loyalty of these two men. She ground the pointed tips of her armored gloves into Naseema's soft hips, and growling angrily, yanked her downwards. The tube in Picard's grip began to tear from it's fastening, and he felt the Feeonix loosen her hold on him. He grasped at her, desperate to maintain his hold.
"Naseema! Don't give up!" he cried.
"Sir," she replied with resigned calm. "You must let me go or we will both die."
"No!" he bellowed, now scrambling to keep his hands locked on the slipping tube, as well as the falling Feeonix, determined not to let the queen take anything he valued with her. He turned his eyes to the ceiling, searching frantically for another handhold. Then his prayers were answered. A pair of slender, shimmering, gold-flecked hands rose up from the coolant cloud, and fastened themselves around the queen's waist with an iron-like grip. Data's head and shoulders appeared next, the organic flesh having dissolved, exposing the brushed metal texture of his duranium skull, and the colorful, blinking lights of his circuitry. It was the most beautiful sight Picard had ever seen. The android, his jaw clenched with undaunted fortitude, started to drag the queen down into the gas with him. She screeched, and clawed at the Feeonix, who was now struggling against her, resolved to help her android protector win his battle. The queen finally faltered, and her fingers slid down Naseema's leg, as she lost out to Data's strength, and they both fell back into the thick mist of the plasma coolant, and disappeared. The queen's hideous, unearthly screams echoed across the vast expanse of engineering as her organic components were liquified by the plasma coolant, until there was silence.