Spatio-temporal dynamics of a deterministic three-level cellular automaton (TLCA) of Zykov-Mikhailov type (Sov. Phys. - Dokl., 1986, Vol.31, No.1, P.51) is studied numerically. Evolution of spatial structures is investigated both for the original Zykov-Mikhailov model (which is applicable to, for example, Belousov-Zhabotinskii chemical reactions) and for proposed by us TLCA, which is a generalization of Zykov-Mikhailov model for the case of two-channel diffusion. Such the TLCA is a minimal model for an excitable medium of microwave phonon laser, called phaser (D. N. Makovetskii, Tech. Phys., 2004, Vol.49, No.2, P.224; cond-mat/0402640). The most interesting observed forms of TLCA dynamics are as follows: (a) spatio-temporal transient chaos in form of highly bottlenecked collective evolution of excitations by rotating spiral waves (RSW) with variable topological charges; (b) competition of left-handed and right-handed RSW with unexpected features, including self-induced alteration of integral effective topological charge; (c) transient chimera states, i.e. coexistence of regular and chaotic domains in TLCA patterns; (d) branching of TLCA states with different symmetry which may lead to full restoring of symmetry of imperfect starting pattern. Phenomena (a) and (c) are directly related to phaser dynamics features observed earlier in real experiments at liquid helium temperatures on corundum crystals doped by iron-group ions. ACM: F.1.1, I.6, J.2; PACS:05.65.+b, 07.05.Tp, 82.20.Wt