In strictly human terms, on Earth, drugs that will enhance a warrior's spirit on the battlefield have been around for at least 16,000 years, since the Roman Empire in Europe and the Chinese Dynasties in Asia. They were used by the Knights during the Crusades and by the Native Americans. Most of the names and types of the drugs are lost to time, but many existed, such as cannabis, peyote, and rush.
In the particularly bloody 20th century, the Nazis of Germany's Third Reich used early forms of LSD to promote discipline in the ranks of their shock troops. Even the great United States used them covertly, in the form of more refined LSD and other psychotropic drugs, during the fiasco of Vietnam.
The three or four centuries following the 20th enjoyed a decline in usage, although research went on. Berserker drugs were abandoned as unethical and unnecessary by all self-respecting nations/states. More emphasis was placed on mechanical technology and smart machines, the biological warrior inferior in all ways to the machine. However, after The Galactic War there was a brief increase in usage, and nanotechnological sabotage came into vogue with the terrorists of the day. The biological warriors, human and extra-terrestrial alike, could much more effectively discriminate targets in surgical and covert actions.
Currently, research and development of these drugs is limited. There are rumors that several coalitions of nations/planets have harvested bio-warriors (both hyperhumans and extraterrestrials) to better understand the combat condition and possibly to use in armed conflict.
Results
The reason these drugs have come in and out of favor for the masters of those that use them is that they are absolutely unpredictable. In each case throughout the history of the known universe, attempts to use them have resulted in mass local casualties and far-reaching effects on the users, demographically.
However, like the alchemists of 10th century Earth, the desire to turn lead into gold has too much hold on today's scientists, and research continues.
Present Situation
Rumors have come about lately that corporations on Earth would like to get into the more lucrative commercial lanes nearer the Lattice, particularly World-0. It has also been heard that there has been usage of the drugs by the military on Earth to assist the corporations in this endeavor.
Substantiation of these rumors is null.
However, within recent years, those who watch such things have noticed that 117 former soldiers, serving at bases on the continent of Australia, thought to be a bastion of military R&D in that Solar System, have left Earth. None of them left for the same destination, but each of them were cited in police reports involving particularly violent incidents before departure from Earth.
by Proteus
The Bitpod is an amalgam of remote-agent devices. It can function as a spycam, a remote bomb, a message-carrier, a tracking device, an away-inspector, or any other job that the operator sees fit to put it to. It can "fly" on its tiny gravplates. It can function for thousands or millions of hours on nanofusion batteries.
The smallest Bitpod ever built that was capable of diverse tasks and specialization is the Felux Nanopod, which is sized at no more than 220 microns for the Model One and 180 Microns for the Model One-B. The Nanopod, because of its size, is limited in capabilities.
Using quantum-fractal data encoding, a Bitpod of no more than a millimeter is capable of carrying well over a billion megabytes of information.
"Suicide" Bitpods of decaying plastic shells often carry supertoxins to the Bitpod operator's enemies.
by Mr. Halloe