A field scientist grievously wounded by an underground predator while taking crater samples.
Dr. Bharadwaj is collecting samples with Volescu in a coastal crater when a large buried creature explodes upward. It catches her in its mouth, inflicting massive wounds to her right leg and side, before Murderbot shoots at it and tears her free.
Unconscious and bleeding through her suit, Bharadwaj is carried from the crater, kept warm against Murderbot's damaged body, and treated during the hopper flight. By the time the group reaches the habitat, Overse and Arada have stabilized her enough for transfer to Medical, though her longer-term condition is not yet known.
Her features are not described. At the crisis point she wears a field suit badly torn and bloodied at the right leg and side.
Bharadwaj is one of the scientists conducting the planetary assessment. Her sudden injury reveals that the supposedly surveyed island contains a lethal subterranean threat.