UNSEEN HANDS FLIGHT MC730

Unseen Hands: Flight MC730 Ralph KeeganA conspiracy thriller inspired by real aviation mysteries, imagining a fictional counterpart to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.When Flight MC730 departs Kuala Lumpur for Beijing carrying 355 souls, no one aboard suspects they are about to become pawns in a covert operation decades in the making. Deep in the Australian outback, a hidden facility known as Delta Four-concealed within the legitimate Jindalee Over-the-Horizon Radar Network-has developed the ability to seize control of a civilian aircraft's avionics from thousands of kilometres away. Authorised at the highest levels of government, the operation targets stolen stealth technology being smuggled aboard by rogue defence contractors, but the human cost proves far greater than anyone anticipated.Told from a sweeping ensemble of perspectives-the doomed flight crew fighting controls that no longer answer to them, the operators executing orders they increasingly dread, a prime minister wrestling with the weight of what he has authorised, and a lone yachtswoman who stumbles across the aftermath at sea-the novel unfolds across two intertwining timelines. Years later, an investigative journalist begins piecing together fragments of local testimony, classified fuel records, and Indigenous oral history that hint at a truth the government believed safely buried.Meticulously researched and technically detailed, the novel blends techno-thriller precision with a slow-building sense of dread, exploring themes of state secrecy, moral compromise, and the human wreckage left behind when power operates unchecked. Keegan is careful to note that the book is a work of fiction and does not claim to explain the real MH370 disappearance, offering the story instead as an exploration of the costs of national security decisions made in the dark.A tense, ambitious debut for readers of aviation thrillers, conspiracy fiction, and stories that ask what happens when unseen hands are given absolute control.