Antonio Silva

Major Antonio Silva was a Field Grade officer in the UNSC Marine Corps. He was the Commanding Officer of the 's Marine Shock Trooper contingent during the Battle of Installation 04 in September 2552.

Biography
Around 2525, Silva was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and assigned to command a platoon of ODSTs aboard the. That same year, to test the new SPARTAN-II physical augmentations, ONI enlisted four of Silva's men to confront SPARTAN-117 in the Atlas ' gym. The ODSTs were no match for the Spartan and three were killed while one was severely wounded. Silva viewed this as murder and was appalled when the Spartan was not punished. Silva held a deep grudge for the SPARTAN-II program from that time forward.

In 2552, Major Silva was deployed with his ODST Battalion aboard the "new". He and his men defended the ship's new engine generators during the Battle of Reach and the Battle of Installation 04. Silva then abandoned the Autumn in Human Entry Vehicles with his second in command, First Lieutenant Melissa McKay, and the few hundred of his men that were revived from cryo in time. During the trip down, he did not like the personality of the Command HEVs AI, Wellsley, nor the AI's constant bragging about the things it claimed to do as the Duke of Wellington.

When he and his troops landed on Installation 04, Silva rallied his men to capture a nearby butte that would become Alpha Base. With the capture of Captain Keyes by the Covenant, Silva found himself in charge of the Autumn's surviving crew. He met with Spartan-117, now a Master Chief Petty Officer, and blatantly told him that he and his Spartans were "freaks", and that they died because they were not strong and could not adapt in battle. Silva continued to say that the Master Chief was the last of a "dying breed", and that "real" humans, his ODST, would win the war, not Spartans. This reflected his sentiment which was completely unknown to anyone else at the time. McKay disagreed with him but never vocalized it. It is unknown how he knew that it was a Spartan who killed his men, since at that time they were top secret. It is also unknown how he would have learned of the Spartan-II's abduction, as that information remains highly classified.

Silva later ordered Lt. McKay to ferry supplies from the crashed Autumn to Alpha Base and hold the docking and supply bays until all further supplies have been taken. He then rallied his forces during a Covenant attack of the base, and again when the Flood appeared and tried to infest the base. Silva succeded by interrogating the found Private First Class Wallace A. Jenkins, now a Combat Form, and discovered the attack, plugging the holes underneath the base before the Flood could attack.

After the battle, Silva and his men came in contact with Cortana one last time and learned about the downed Covenant vessel Truth and Reconciliation. He planned a rapid assault on the vessel just as the Covenant had destroyed the Flood aboard the ship, which was successful.

It finally became increasingly clear that Silva wanted to be the hero of the entire Halo event, and intended to take the vessel directly to Earth, which not only violated the Cole Protocol, but would put the homeworld in serious danger of infestation by the Flood as Silva refused to let sterilization of the ship be completed. He also planned to meet the Master Chief and Cortana in outer space so that Cortana could pilot the vessel.

In his quest for glory, Silva left McKay no choice but to destroy the fiber optic bundle connecting the bridge to the engine, causing the ship to crash onto the surface of Installation 04. This killed not only the two of them, but every other life form who was on the ship. In spite of the massive loss of life, it prevented the Flood infestation from threatening Earth.

Trivia

 * Although UNSC Marine Corps battalions are usually commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel or higher, Silva commands his own battalion while only a Major, indicating that the original battalion commander was killed during the Covenant's assault on the Autumn, and that Silva took his place.


 * In latin, Silva means forest.