Pacific Vortex: Squid and more

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A nervous squid, the first sign of sea life, dashed across his narrow angle of sight and vanished.

Squid are cephalopods of the order Teuthida, which comprises around 300 species. Like all other cephalopods, squid have a distinct head, bilateral symmetry, a mantle, and arms. Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs and two, usually longer, tentacles. Squid are strong swimmers and certain species can 'fly' for short distances out of the water.

Squid are often confused with octopus. A squid has a different shaped head - torpedo shaped, while an octopus has a bag shaped head. Octopus also walk along the ocean's surface, while squids jet along.

...he went through the flooded forward torpedo department

Modern submarines use either swim out systems or a pulse of water to discharge the torpedo from the tube, both of which have the advantage of being significantly quieter than previous systems, helping avoid detection of the firing from passive sonar. Earlier designs used a pulse of compressed air or a hydraulic ram.

Originally, torpedo tubes were fitted to both the bow and stern of submarines. Modern submarine bows are usually occupied by a large sonar array, necessitating torpedoes launched from midships tubes angled outward, while stern tubes have largely disappeared. The first French and Russian submarines carried their torpedoes externally in Drzewiecki drop collars. These were cheaper than tubes, but less reliable. Both Britain and America experimented with external tubes in World War II. External tubes offered a cheap and easy way of increasing torpedo capacity without radical redesign, something neither had time or resources to do prior to, or early in, the war. America's use was mainly limited to earlier Porpoise-, Salmon-, and Sargo-class boats. Until the widespread introduction of the Gato class, common American submarines only carried 4 forward and either 2 or 4 Stern tubes, something many American submarine officers felt provided them with inadequate firepower. This problem was compounded by the notorious unreliability of the Mark 14 torpedo.

Late in World War II, the U.S. adopted a 16 in (41 cm) homing torpedo (known as "Cutie") for use against escorts. It was basically a modified Mark 24 Mine with wooden rails to allow firing from a 21 in (53 cm) torpedo tube

He deciphered the ship's name: ANDREI VYBORG

This is a made up name. Andrei is a Russian first name, but Vyborg is the name of a town.

Two figures sat astride the sleek mini-sub, the man in the front saddle steering.
I've looked this up on the internet, and I have no idea what "saddle steering" means. Presumably because the two men are straddling a seat that goes all the way back (instead of having two individual captain's chairs), so they're sitting in the sub as on the saddle of a horse... but no one else on the internet has ever used the term!)