Elena Santos

Elena Santos
	; Elena Santos
Information
Title	Technical Sergeant
Gender	Female
Race	Human
Faction	Humans
Status	Alive
Portrayed by	Michelle Rodriguez

Technical Sergeant Elena Santos was a technical sergeant in the Recon Division of the 61st Air Wing, of the United States Air Force. She was a survivor from an alien attack during the Battle of Los Angeles. She was portrayed by Michelle Rodriguez.

Biography[]

Not much is known about her early life, but as of 2011, Elena Santos was serving as a technical sergeant in the U.S. Air Force at the time of the Battle of Los Angeles, a deadly attack on Los Angeles led by extraterrestrial forces. She went into the battle still working as a technical sergeant with a very important mission: to find the aliens' communication center. When her division was attacked by the aliens, she crashed, but escaped. She was the only survivor.

Santos joined another group of soldiers fighting in the battle. Soon, they combined with the forces of Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz and helped to evacuate a group of innocent civilians from an LAPD police department within a three-hour-time-limit, or they would all die when the U.S. Air Force would arrive to bomb the city in an effort to kill the extraterrestrial invaders.

When a helicopter arrived to help some of the wounded Marines, it took off and exploded after an alien aircraft attacked it. Santos went with the rest of the platoon and the civilians to a bus and took off in an effort to help evacuate the civilians. The bus was attacked on a freeway, though, and the Marines had to begin rappelling the civilians off the side of the freeway. 2nd Lieutenant William Martinez, the who was the commander of the platoon, passed on leadership to Nantz in the midst of the battle and sacrificed himself by detonating C-4 explosives inside the bus to destroy an alien air unit.

Nantz and the platoon took the civilians to a nearby convenience store to rest. Joe Rincon, one of the civilians, had been fatally wounded when an alien shot him for defending Jibril Adukwu, one of the Marines, and was being taken care of by another civilian, named Michele, who was a veterinarian. The planned Bomb Drop had never happened, though, so Nantz took the platoon and civilians to the FOB. While there, they discovered that the bombing didn't happen because it was destroyed by aliens. While there, Rincon died because of his wounds, leaving his distressed son Hector mortified. Meanwhile, Nantz spotted a black spot on the ground that he thought was the alien's command center and that it was hidden underground. He was right and he departed from the helicopter to destroy the command center. The rest of the platoon followed as did Santos. Together they held off the aliens as they called in a missile strike on the command center. During the battle, Santos shot down a drone that was going to block the last missile, allowing the command center to be destroyed. The remaining aliens retreated following the loss of their drones. After retreating to a temporary military base in the Mojave Desert, Nantz and his men decided to redeploy into Los Angeles with the returning forces. Despite not being a part of the platoon or even a front-line soldier, Santos chose to join them, taking with her a laptop as she went.

Trivia[]

Despite being a Technical Sergeant, Santos is a skilled marksman. When asked if she could use her weapon, she told Nantz that she didn't survive on her good looks. Later, she laid down covering fire with the Marines and her skills impressed Lee Imlay who hadn't wanted her with them moments earlier. She was also able to shoot down a drone with a rocket launcher.
Despite not being a front-line soldier, Santos has displayed the skills of one such as her marksmanship. The Marines reaction to her skills indicate that this is unusual as Nantz asked if she could use her weapon and Imlay was at first annoyed she wanted to help and then impressed with her. She was also courageous as seen when she decided to join the Marines in the attack on the command center rather than retreating to safety and chose to continue fighting with them afterwards rather than returning to her unit.