Antonio Silva

Major Antonio Silva was a human Marine and ODST in the UNSC.

Antonio Silva entered the service sometime around 2525. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and put in charge of a platoon of ODSTs on the Carrier UNSC Atlas. That year, ONI arranged for four of his men to be in the Atlas gym when Spartan-117, fresh from his physical augmentations, went to work out in the gym. John felt that the artificial gravity was malfunctioning so he removed the pin from the bench press weights and timed how long it took to fall to the ground. When the ODST's arrived to work out, the weight fell off of one side of the bar and nearly crushed his spotters foot. Obviously they took offense to this and proceeded to fight him. John got in a few good hits until the ODST's sergeant arrived. He said "You're all so eager to fight, get in the ring and get to it". John, having an objective from a higher rank, intended to test his physical abilities and response time. The soldiers were no match for the Spartan, and he killed two of them easily. Silva viewed this as murder, and was appalled to find out that Spartan-117 was not punished at all. Silva came to resent this fact, and it gave him deep animosity for the SPARTAN-II program.

In 2552, he held the rank of Major and was in charge of all ODSTs on the cruiser UNSC Pillar of Autumn. He and his men were assigned to defend the ship's new engine generators during The Battle of Reach. Later, when the Covenant attacked the ship above Installation 04, Silva only had a few hundred of his men revived from cryo in time, and his second in command became First Lieutenant Melissa McKay. Silva and his men eventually abandoned the Autumn aboard Human Entry Vehicles. Silva, aboard the command HEV, had to deal with the AI, Wellsley, who was required to operate the equipment of the HEV. Silva did not like Wellsley's personality, nor did he enjoy Wellsley's constant rabble about things he claimed to do as the Duke of Wellington.

On the Surface of Installation 04, Silva rallied his men to successfully capture the 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, and blatantly told him that he and his Spartans were freaks, and that they died because they were not strong and could not adapt. Silva continued to say that the Master Chief was the last of a dying breed, and that "real" humans 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.

Silva ordered McKay to ferry supplies from the crashed Autumn to Alpha Base, and then organized most of the activity of the bays until Keyes was freed from Covenant captivity. He rallied his forces during a Covenant attack of the base, and then again when the Flood appeared and tried to infest the base. Silva interrogated Private First Class Wallace A. Jenkins, a Combat Form, and discovered the attack, plugging the holes underneath the base before the flood could attack.

Finally, Silva and his men linked up with the Master Chief and 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 vessel, which was successful.

It finally became increasingly clear that Silva wanted to be the hero of the Halo and intended to take the vessel directly to Earth, which not only violated the Cole Protocol, but put the homeworld in serious danger of infestation by the Flood as Silva refused to wait 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. However her actions saved Earth from an infestation by the Flood.