Antonio Silva

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

Around 2525, Silva was commissioned 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 ' s gym. The ODSTs were no match and two were killed. 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 deployed with his ODSTs aboard the. He and his men would defend the ship's new engine generators during the First Battle of Reach. During the Battle of Installation 04, Silva would abandon 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. 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.

On 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. 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 learnt of the Spartan-II's abduction, as that information is still top secret.

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 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 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.