I ended up mentioning the stories I wrote in a conversation with Theo and he asked if I could post it here for him to read.
And yes, there are a few plot holes in both stories, but when you have a (I think it was 750) word limit, you kinda have to leave some of the details unexplained. I completely understand that an alien language could not be translated in just the course of a few minutes, but I doubt the contest judges would have been impressed by a story about Shane taking 10 years to decode the language. :P